The Ghana Education Service (GES) has directed regional and district directors of education to submit data on all dilapidated school buildings and schools under trees in their districts.
“Of particular concern to us are the school buildings which have developed dangerous cracks and are not safe for use. Also, we need up-to-date information on the number of schools that are still operating under trees in the respective regions,” a circular to the directors signed by the Director-General of the GES, Mr Jacob Kor, said.
It said management of the service would be grateful if all regional directors of education collated the data from their respective districts and submitted them to the Director-General latest by Wednesday, February 22, 2017, for onward submission to the Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh.
Rehabilitation works
Throwing more light on the directive, the Head of the Public Relations Unit of the GES, Rev. Jonathan Bettey, said the auditing of the schools and data on them were to enable rehabilitation works to be carried out on the buildings for the safety of the students.
Recently, a school wall collapsed on some pupils of the Gyambra Methodist School at Breman Gyambra in the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa District in the Central Region.
Six of the children aged four and five, who died in the incident, were about to settle for studies when the wall collapsed. The block in question had developed cracks and appeals for the defects to be fixed were not adhered to.
School infrastructure
Dr Opoku Prempeh later visited the school and re-echoed the government’s commitment to accelerate efforts at improving basic school infrastructure.
He was accompanied by the Director-General of Mr Kor and other officials of the service.
The minister reportedly said it was unfortunate that a dilapidated school building could be left to cause such a disaster, and stressed that the government would work to ensure that all ongoing school projects were completed to give pupils conducive and decent places of learning.
Rev. Bettey said the death of the pupils was a disaster that called for action on the maintenance of school structures.
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