Residents turn school into toilet

Asonkwaa (B/A) June 23, GNA - The authorities of Nkoranza District Directorate of Education have temporarily closed down the local primary school at Asonkwaa, a farming community, due to the persistent practice by some unscrupulous youth who have turned the classrooms into a place of convenience.

Mr. Francis Collins Osei, Head teacher, has made several complaints to the School Management Committee (SMC) and opinion leaders in the area but the youth have continued to defecate and smoke Indian hemp on the school campus.

The order by the directorate followed a recommendation by a five-member investigating team appointed by the director, Mr Kwabena Agyemang Badu to help address the situation.

Classrooms of the kindergarten, some desks and the blackboards were covered with faeces as discovered by the team.

The team comprised Mr. Yaw Ntim Korsah, Assistant Director in-charge of Human Resource and Manpower Development, Mr. Kwaku Amoah-Tutu, Assistant Director, Inspectorate Division, Mr. Osei Fosu, Circuit Supervisor, in-charge of Asonkwaa, Mr. Osei Tahiri, Circuit Supervisor and Nana Adu Baffo Adade, Public Relations Officer. At a meeting with the staff, Mr. Kwabena Sarkodie and Mr. Kingsley Okyere, chairman and secretary respectively of the school management, the team concluded that unless the community leaders resolved to find a lasting solution to the problem, the staff and pupils of the school would not be allowed to attend classes in the "desecrated and contaminated" classrooms.

The team made efforts to get in touch with the Odikro as well as the Assembly Member for the area about the problem, but all to no avail. Asonkwaa is a settler-farming town domiciled by people from the Northern, Upper East and West Regions who are in serious farming activities.

The school is highly populated but the teachers are faced with accommodation problems, as some of them are even putting up in the offices at the school.