School Pupils Escape Death

It was certainly an act of divine providence that saved the lives of 256 pupils of the Methodist Primary School at Dokrochiwa in the Kraboa-Coaltar district of the Eastern Region last Saturday.

A rainstorm that lasted for hours on Holy Saturday literally brought the whole structure in which the children attend classes down to the ground in one frightening heap, according to the headteacher, Mr. Albert Quainoo.

The children were home on Easter holidays preparing for their terminal examinations due the following week when the rainstorm hit the village and outlying communities in the Ayensuano constituency.

The school, which looked more like a death trap than a facility for education and child development, was started by the Methodist Church in 1975 and taken over by government four years later with no improvement in the existing structures held to the ground by untreated planks and wawa boards.

Termites had infested the structure, which had served as a school block for the children in the last eight years at the time it was razed to the ground by the rainstorm. '

The MP for the constituency, Mr. Godfried Okyere told the Chronicle that only a few weeks ago, he had ordered some schools in his constituency which were in similar deplorable conditions, to be pulled down to avoid such tragedies.

He lamented the state of neglect and deprivation afflicting his constituency and called on the Ghana Education Service (GES), the District Assembly and NGOs especially the World Vision of Ghana to intervene and bring relief to the constituency.

Baffour Opoku Agyemang, Chief of Dokrochiwa, also expressed the same sentiments and wondered if Dokrochiwa was not part of Ghana.

"For an area rich in agricultural products, especially cocoa, there is no point ignoring us when it comes to sharing of the national cake", he told the paper.

But the Chronicle learnt that road construction works would soon begin in the area to open up the constituency for purposes of development.