Teachers annoyed about "shit bombs!"

The scandalous behaviour of some as yet unidentified people in some towns near Sunyani, the Brong-Ahafo capital, is raising the hackles of schoolteachers in the area. They say they cannot continue supervising the removal of human excrement, when they should be teaching.

For a long time now there has been a spate of defecations in classrooms and school compounds, particularly at Abesim and Tanoso. It is happening everyday and it is increasing in frequency and volume, according to reports reaching The Statesman. The teachers are not at all amused; they say they are paid to teach children, not to clean up and will leave if the deliberate acts do not stop.

Among those who have condemned this scandalous behaviour is the local GNAT Secretary, Samson Aboyela. Says he: “Teachers go to school only to find human excreta at corners of their classrooms, sometimes inside pupils’ desk! This is an affront to the dignity of teachers and has the potential to lower their morale.”

The situation is even worse at Tanoso. The headmaster of the Methodist JSS, Kenneth Gyebi, told our reporter that not a single day passes without heaps of faeces being found either in one or more classrooms, or in the school’s compound

“About a couple of days ago I entered my office only to see the walls plastered with faeces,” he said. The perpetrators of these deeds do not stop at messing up; they have also been vandalising and stealing school property. The Headmaster of UC JSS, J. A. Okra, complained that he arrived at the school on December 6 to find that his office had been broken into, all cupboards forced open and a number of items, including dictionaries, textbooks, a wall clock, a radio set and tools worth over 1m cedis taken away.

He complained that there is no watchman in the school, even though he has made several appeals to the district education directorate.

Adu Mensah, the Headmaster of the local Model JSS, told The Statesman that vandals have destroyed cupboards in his school. He has now made an arrangement to send books and other items to the nearby SDA school for safe keeping every day.

Mensah accused the elders of the town of showing no concern about the situation, even though each nasty event is reported to them.

A number of the teachers have told The Statesman that they do not see how they can be working among people who have such a negative attitude towards teachers, their own children and siblings and education as a whole. “It is as if they are telling us to leave and they have chosen the most nasty way to do it!” he remarked.