Shit bombing in Wassa schools forces closure

Repeated cases of smearing classrooms with human excreta otherwise known as shit-bombing, has become huge source of worry for authorities in the Prestea Huni-Valley District of the Western Region, who have cautioned unidentified miscreants against the practice.

The latest of such acts occurred at the Dumase D/A Basic School, two weeks after the District Chief Executive and authorities of the Ghana Education Service held a forum with the community to address the issue.

The latest incident in the school, is the seventh time pupils and teachers have had to clean human excreta in the morning before accessing the classroom. The Headmaster of the School, Aboagye Dacosta expressed his displeasure about the unfortunate situation.

He said although the Prestea Huni Valley DCE, Robert Wisdom Cudjoe and his entourage came to the community to urge the people to form a watch dog committee to monitor the happenings around the school, the perpetrators have repeated it without been caught.

Mr. Aboagye said the situation has rendered teaching and learning in the school unattractive.

"They smeared the human excreta in primary three and four. The food vendors in the school even decided to come and clean it but I decided to wait for the authorities to come and see it before the cleaning is done. This is because the DCE had been here for the community forum which many of the residents didn't even attend because they don't care about the school's progress. When we came, they had smeared the human excreta on the desks used by the pupils. I also called on the chief because I wanted him to come and see it but because they were not immediately available the women who sell in the school joined the pupils to clean the classrooms. If children come to school and they can't even enter the classroom because the place is smelling then obviously it will affect attendance and enrollment" he lamented.

The Head teacher however believes that the short walls of the classrooms makes it easy for the perpetrators to access them and thus called on the District Assembly to make funds available to fix that problem.

When contacted, the Prestea Huni Valley DCE, Robert Wisdom Cudjoe expressed his disappointment about the recurring situation. He revealed that teachers in the school have asked to be transferred because they can no longer endure the embarrassing situation.

He described the situation as one that had a negative impact on the Prestea Huni Valley district Assembly.

Another incident

In a similar incident, the Agona Amenfi Methodist School in the Amenfi Central District of the Western Region, has also been closed down temporarily due to shit bombing. The situation angered the teachers leading to the temporary closure of the school on April 9 2015.

The PTA chairman of the school, Nicholas Blay, who narrated the incident to journalists, wondered how the classrooms could be smeared when in their case the classrooms were under lock and not easily accessible.

"Those who do this don't just ease themselves around the school compound but they smear it in the classrooms. Surprisingly, these classrooms are under lock so we wonder how they do this. There was one very embarrassing situation where the Head teacher was at the entrance to his office when someone threw human excreta that hit him. The next day too part of the classrooms were smeared so the authorities closed down the school for the rest of that day. We the PTA Chairmen at Agona Amenfi have decided to engage a security guard for the school. We do not understand why people will be doing this".

Shit bombing

The smearing of classrooms with human excreta has occurred many times across the country, and has been a concern for the Ghana Education Service, GES.

Although reasons for such acts are unclear, the perpetrators who are mostly community members reportedly resort to this as a means of punishment particularly when they have scores to settle with the school's management.

In other cases, drug users and peddlers who mostly use the school's premises and environs for their activities, also smear the classrooms in response to attempts by the schools to evacuate them from their environment.

However, most of these government basic schools have no security guards, a situation that partly fuels this practice.