Basic schools urged to prioritize maintenance of restrooms to promote sound teaching and learning

The La Dadekotopon Municipal Education Director, Mrs.Habiba Kotoma has emphasized the need for basic school authorities to prioritize and promote the maintenance of restroom facilities in schools to ensure sound hygiene and foster harmonious teaching and learning practices among learners and facilitators.

She gave the strongest indication yet that the absence of proper functioning restrooms have the potential to disrupt the education of students to a considerable extent.

According to her, the use of washroom facilities was a human right issue and there was no basis to deny students or the individuals of access.

Speaking at an event to intensify user education to climax World Toilet Day at Tenashie Basic School in the municipality, which was on the theme " accelerating change", she charged basic school authorities not to lock up restrooms on the basis of minor defects to inconvenience students and staff.

Earlier in the week, the School Health Education Programme(SHEP) Unit under the Municipal Education Directorate had visited some schools in the municipality to promote user education of washroom facilities.

Mrs.Kotoma urged basic schools within the municipality to put in place a team to ensure regular maintenance and effective use of washroom facilities adding that minor defects on the facilities should be fixed promptly before they degenerate into worst case scenarios which would attract higher cost.

She commended the intervention of the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area(GAMA) in collaboration with the La Dadekotopon Municipal Assembly(LADMA) for the provision of a wide- range of washroom facilities for a number of schools in the municipality.

Plans are afoot, she said, to hold a stakeholders meeting within the school circles in the area to brainstorm on management strategies to prolong the lifespan of the restroom facilities.

On her part, the SHEP Coordinator, Mrs. Constance Owusu Sekyere said the her outfit would continue to intensity user- education and prevail on teachers to promote monitoring and behavioral change in the schools in order to achieve the goal of accelerating change for this year.

She said about 95 percent of schools in the municipality have washroom facilities but the issue of maintenance would be improved to prolong their lifespan.

The SHEP Coordinator indicated that, the La Dadekotopon Municipal Assembly was working assiduously with major stakeholders to bridge the deficit gap in the facilities.

She said the support of the Parent Teacher Associations(PTA) through self-managed levies to keep the facilities in good shape was critical as evidenced by success stories in some schools, adding that capitation grants were not enough to cater for operation and maintenance issues in the schools.

In a remark, a representative from LADMA, Mr Samuel Momon said the assembly, together with its partners would not relent in its effort to bridge the deficit gap for deprived schools to meet the expected sanitation standards.

He said the issue of sanitation in its entirety remains one of the critical issues at the forefront of the assembly's quest to deliver on its mandate to better the lot of the people.

He applauded the decision reached by stakeholders and authorities to prevail on the PTA to support maintenance of the facilities to enable it function well to help promote hygiene in the schools.

The issue of maintenance, he indicated, should be given the foremost attention by all schools in order not to reverse the gains made in respect of improving sanitation standards adding that the assembly would liase with the education directorate in that regard.