The House education committee on Wednesday discussed the plague of sweltering heat in schools, amid a three-year education ministry plan to roll out air conditioning units across all schools at a cost of €45 million.

A meeting will take place in Limassol on Thursday to discuss setting up the first 50 AC units in September across primary, secondary schools and lyceums.

However technical schools have been omitted at present, sparking questions.

According to the education ministry permanent secretary Marina Hasapi, almost all schools need an electrical upgrade so they can tolerate the electrical load that AC units will demand.

Poed teachers’ union rep Skouroupatis Apostolis said the plan has been in place since 2022 and “it has failed.”

Nonetheless, Hasapi stressed all the necessary works will go ahead.

MPs heard the goal is to install ACs in 650 schools with an average of 20 units per school. Therefore, this would mean 15,000 ACs in total.

For now, the ministry is starting with 50 schools, meaning 10 in each of the five districts. The criteria for their selection have already been set.

According to the chief of technical services at the education ministry Andreas Marangos, new schools under construction as the new technical school in Limassol will have provisions for a central AC system.

Greens MP Charalambos Theopemptou underlined that Cyprus is bound by EU commitments for an energy upgrade of all public buildings by 2014 – something which was not done for schools.

Marangos said since 2017, any schools which were under study and constructed was zero energy consumption. He added that every school that has undergone a seismic upgrade has also undergone an energy upgrade. He noted that seismic upgrading had been carried out in 90 per cent of the schools.