“PEOPLE OF KAYONG IN DESPERATE NEED OF QUALITY EDUCATION”

It is the dream of many children in Kayong, a farming community under the Mion Constituency of the Yendi Municipality in the Northern Region of Ghana, to go to school and learn like their peers in the city. But the dream of these kids seems to be akin to building castles in the air, and this perhaps could be due to the helpless circumstances in which they have found themselves.

The lack of great opportunities for them is certainly against the wish of government’s policy to make basic education free and compulsory for every Ghanaian child of school going age. The question every right thinking Ghanaian especially the people of Kayong are now asking is; will government be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goal II which aims at achieving universal primary education by the year 2015, considering their plight?

Kayong is very far from the nearest community Salkpang, located along the highway leading to the Yendi township where a little more opportunities in terms of health facilities, nice school buildings, pipe-borne water, electricity, good market and sanitation facilities, among others abound.

But Kayong has none of these social amenities as the people of this community travel through a distance of about 18 kilometres to Yendi to source most social services, hoping it might just get better one day in their own backyard.

Travelling to this community itself is a sad and grievous story to tell someone as one will cross about five watercourses during the rainy season due to the bad nature of the road, before finally arriving at the village whose inhabitants are very friendly but seriously yearning for development from their Member of Parliament, Alhaji Dr. Yakubu Ahmed Alhassan of the ruling National Democratic Congress and the Central government respectively.

Until the provision of the only Primary School which runs from class one to three, children in this underdeveloped community walked on foot every day to attend school at Salkpang. However, as soon as the rains start to come (wet season), the children will spend the rest of the term at home learning “nothing” and hope to continue schooling when the season is off.

But thanks to the Ghanaian Development Communities Association (GDCA) and a Community Based Organisation (CBO-network) through whose efforts Kayong has benefitted from its first ever school which was commissioned just recently.

Secretary of the CBO Mr. Abubakari Mahama in a statement to government and the MP for Mion, said “People of Kayong are in desperate need of quality education”. We want our children to alleviate us from poverty in future, he stressed.

According to him, even though education is very expensive it however becomes a hazardous task to be performed by parents who have to allow their children travel that far through the wilderness to school every day.

This is happening because, parents do not want posterity to judge them, but as a matter of fact, it is also imperative the government intervene at this moment in order to save both parents and children some grieve that might befall them one day, he warned.

Kayong Primary School which was commissioned without the presence of the MP for the area, officials of the Ghana Education Service and the Assemblyman who are considered key personalities, would in the meantime be handled by two volunteer teachers, Majeed Mahafus and Iddrisu Alhassan.

Aside Kayong, three other nearby communities such as Cherizau, Binvili and Jebong will also have their children benefit directly from formal education.