School for deaf in crisis

The Mampong Senior High Technical School, Ghana’s only secondary school for the deaf, is in serious distress due to neglect by the state to resource it to function efficiently.

Information gathered by Weekend Finder indicates that the situation at the school has become dire to the extent that the institution is unable to sometimes feed its students.

Sometimes, the school, through the Parent Teacher Association (PTA), has had to raise foodstuff from the community to feed the students.

Interestingly, authorities of the school are tight-lipped on the plight of the school for fear of victimisation.

Reverend Grace Asa-Awuku, a former PTA chairperson of the school, who is not enthused about the situation and the plight of the students of the school, is calling for public support for the school to function as expected.

She is concerned that the only senior high school for hearing impaired children in the country has been left to suffer unduly, thereby jeopardising the future of thousands of these special students.

She explained that because the school is a non-fee-paying institution, it relies solely on funding from the government, which is often not regular.

“It got to a stage PTA had to raise foodstuff for the students.“

This situation, she said, still exists, and for which she was dedicating her time to create awareness of the neglect of the school and to garner support for the school.

Information gathered indicates that government subvention is often not regular, forcing the school to buy food on credit to feed the students.

Again, she noted that many of the students who graduate from the school are not able to continue their education into institutions of higher learning due to lack of opportunities and facilities in many of such institutions in the country for them.

Another sad situation, she said, is that during external examinations, these special students are marked on the same scale as their other counterparts.

She explained, for example, that a deaf person who wants to write “I am going to the hospital” will write “I hospital go” instead because that is the direct interpretation of their signage.

Other information gathered by this paper indicate that since its establishment, the school 's administration block has been operating from a rented premise with limited or no infrastructure for extension, expansion and resourcing for senior high school level education for the deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals.

The classroom block is about two kilometres away from the dormitory; thus the students have to walk from their dormitory to the classroom block daily, crossing the main Mampong–Aburi highway several times a day.

The students, therefore, always run the high risk of being knocked down by speeding vehicles. Such unfortunate event of road accident had been sometimes experienced by the innocent deaf students in the school.

Over the years, the school has lived on the generosity of corporate organisations to survive.