The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to reinstate the Headmaster, as well as Senior Housemaster of Ghana Senior High School (Ghanasco), without delay.
Thomas Musah Tanko, GNAt General Secretary, averred the GES should rather indulge itself with paying Capitation Grant, which has been in arrears for over two years, to teachers and subventions to schools, than to take hasty decisions.
After a video of the purported use of toilets as dormitories for Ghanasco students went viral, the Headmaster, Douglas Haruna Yakubu, and Senior Housemaster, Sayibu Fusseini, were asked by GES to step aside for further investigations into the matter to be carried out.
The Northern Region Director of Education was to lead the investigations and report back in two weeks. However, an inspection conducted at the school by some old students and the Northern Region Minister, Alhaji Alhassan Shaibu, proved that the reports were not accurate.
Speaking in an interview, GNAT’s General Secretary suggested GES should have taken things slowly and acted with caution, as it did not have a full grasp of the situation before sanctioning the headmaster and the housemaster.
“The difficulty I had when I heard the news was that, will a headmaster go and put students in a toilet? Will they do that? Will a rational human being do that? But upon a thorough investigation by the team that went there, we’ve realized that this is an old thing that the students do; that they go there to study. So please, the Ghana Education Service should take it easy. We rather want to remind them that the Capitation Grant has not been paid, for over two years now.”
Thomas Musah Tanko
He claimed that heads of basic school are rather using their monies to run schools. “Should GES be sanctioned for that too?” Musah Tanko asked.
Meanwhile, the Old Students Association of Ghanasco descended heavily on the journalist for misreporting the matter. They said this has been an age-long practice in the school and those cubicles are not meant to be dormitories but as a store room where the students keep their trunks and chop boxes during vacation.
Duffuor Heartbroken About Ghanasco Students Using Toilet As Dorms
Former Minister of Finance, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor described as nothing short of sordid reports that students of Ghana Senior High School use toilets as dormitories, as a result of inadequate facilities.
This comes after the viral video captured the situation in the Tamale-based school, forcing the Ghana Education Service (GES) to sanction the Headmaster and the Senior Housemaster.
Weighing into the discourse, Dr. Duffuor recalled that when he was the Finance Minister, under the Presidency of Professor John Evans Atta Mills, they worked tirelessly to deploy resources to the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund).
He said this was “to conscientiously provide a deluge of boarding facilities for existing schools, and also constructed new schools with such facilities”.
He is, therefore, concerned that as the desire to provide the country’s children a free education is burning, “we must conscientiously also ensure that our children acquire education in dignity”.
Agreeing with the decision by the GES to sanction investigations by asking the two officials of the school to step aside, Dr. Duffuor also called on policy makers to work to ensure that adequate facilities are provided “to support the educational transformation process. Our beloved Motherland is the only country we have, so let us work together to build the Better Ghana we all desire and deserve.”
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