Ascension Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana in Koforidua has evicted close to four hundred (400) Junior High School students of RIIS Presbyterian Basic “B” school in Koforidua from a building that was being used as classrooms.
The building was released to the school by the church for temporal use as a classroom for the Junior High School students about seven years ago however has the government failed to construct a permanent classroom for the school.
A GETFUND project has been abandoned for years.
The church, therefore lost patience hence reclaimed the building displacing the students.
Teachers and JHS students resumed school Tuesday, January 18, 2021, only to see their classrooms being converted into office accommodation with the desks removed outside.
Nana Yaw Debrah Assembly Member for Asuofiri electoral area where the school is situated said the situation is worrying.
“We got here in the morning around 6:30am when we came there was some ongoing renovation works on one of the school building blocks.
The issue is that the church offered the building to the school for temporal use, but now the time period seems to expire so the church now wants to occupy the building back.
RIIS school has been categorized into three, that is A, B, and C but the issue was specifically pertaining to B and so the block was being occupied by the B junior high students”
The Assembly Member continued “but now that the church wants to occupy the building back, then it means that these children will be forced to sit under the tree or study under the sun, but this will affect the children academics because they need a serene and friendly environment with sound minds to learn as children.
This is the more reason why there are a lot of officials from GES storming the school premises to urgently plan to find a place for these children. It is always hard to complete the syllabus so the introduction of the shift system will make it even more difficult for most teachers to complete the syllabus”.
As an emergency measure, the management of RIIS Presby ” B” Basic School and Ghana Education Service has reintroduced a shift system for the lower primary to enable the JHS students to improvise their classrooms.
But the assembly members are worried “With the shift system, the students will enjoy a maximum of two to three hours in school including break time and other activities, but when they are together without the shift system they will have to spend more than three hours and this will not help us to achieve our objectives.
This will be a disadvantage to the school and also the municipality as well, so who then should be blamed if the school produces bad results”.
The New Juaben South Municipal Director of Education Victor Degraft Etsison told the media, the emergency measure rolled out is not a reintroduction of the shift system.
He said it is temporal arrangements to improvise the lower primary classroom facilities to enable the JHS students to get classrooms for uninterrupted learning as the final years prepare for BECE.
The Municipal Education Director however appealed to GETFUND to complete an abandoned classroom block project in the school.
Source: Mybrytnewsroom.com/Obed Ansah
