Assembly acts on abandoned school projects

The Asante-Akim South District Assembly has acted to salvage projects left abandoned over the past 15 years at the Juaso Senior High School (SHS). These include the headmaster's bungalow, home science block, and teachers’ accommodation.

Mr De-graft Forkuo, the District Chief Executive (DCE), told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that they would make budgetary allocation to complete them to end the school’s struggle to house its teaching staff. The situation, where the headmaster is staying at Konongo and has to make a round trip of about 14 kilometres daily to work, he said “is not the best and not acceptable”.

Again there is also a problem with supervision, as only two, out of the teacher population of about 70, are housed on campus he added. Mr Forkuo said “things certainly need to change” to create serene conditions for effective teaching and learning.

The assembly’s intervention is a direct response to a plea by the management of the SHS, for re-start of construction works on the stalled structures, carried by the GNA.

Reporters of the national wire service had visited the school under STAR-Ghana’s media auditing and tracking of development projects, an initiative launched to put a spotlight on how government’s resources were helping to change the lives of the people, particularly those in the rural communities.

The goal is to aid transparency and promote good governance. Mr Forkuo said education development was a major thrust of the assembly and that it would continue to put more resources into the provision of school infrastructure.

The Juaso SHS is riddled with accommodation challenges not only for the teaching staff but the students. It has been forced to convert classrooms into a sleeping place for the girls as work on a two-storey dormitory for the school had come to standstill since year 2011. The project is funded from the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GET-Fund).