SOS: Monawara School In Tamale In Need Of Desperate Help

Most often we hear of the existence of schools under trees or in dilapidated structures in rural areas where people are still faced with the challenges of serious underdevelopment. But the situation has just manifested itself in Ghana’s third largest city – Tamale, in a suburb called Kukuo Village, which is just about 30 minutes drive from the Metropolitan Directorate of Education or the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly to this community. Freelance Journalist Joseph Ziem visits the community to see for himself the only basic school which has been destroyed by rainstorm, forcing pupils to learn under terrible conditions and reports…..

It is the dream of the children of Kukuo Village also known as Shillayili, a suburb of the Tamale Metropolis to go to school and learn every day, as is the norm in all public and private schools in Ghana, except on weekends and public holidays.

But the dream of these children who are pupils of the Monawara English and Arabic Primary School, the only basic school located in the community seemed to be akin to building castles in the air; and this is due to the helpless circumstances in which they have found themselves.

The lack of support for the poor children and their parents towards the rehabilitation of the six unit classroom block which rooftop was ripped-off by rainstorm some seven months ago, has forced them to spend most part of the last two terms at home due to frequent rains.

Any day they came to school, they sat inside the roofless building as the sun scorches them till they close. Besides, when it threatened to rain, then it meant that school activities had to come to an abrupt end and all of them, including their teachers would quickly rush home.

As a community member said in a chat with this reporter as he toured the school with him, “these are some of the schools the Mayor of Tamale Alhaji Abdulai Haruna Friday and education officials were supposed to visit on my first day at school and not the well developed ones. I don’t think if any of them particularly the mayor should visit this school, he would have proper sleep at night until he rehabilitates it”, angry Adam Baba said.

The questions every right thinking resident is now asking are; will government achieve its loudly professed Better Ghana Agenda, and what about the United Nations Millennium Development Goal II which aims at achieving universal basic education by the year 2015, considering the plight of these innocent children who also desire to become responsible citizens in future if only quality education is guaranteed?

It is not surprising that the standard of education in the Tamale Metropolis has been falling so sharply over the years. Students’ performance at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in recent years is very abysmal. From 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, Tamale secured 60^th, 69^th, 88^th, 91^st, 89^th, 98^th, and 103^rd positions respectively, out of the 134 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assembly (MMDAs) in the country.

The Assemblyman for the Koblimahagu Electoral Area Iddrisu Mohammed Mustapha in whose jurisdiction the school is located told this reporter, that officials of the National Disaster Management Organisation were informed, but the only support they could offer the school was two packets of roofing sheets. “Also, the Metropolitan Education Directorate of the Ghana Education Service had been notified by the school authorities about the situation, but no support has come to the school yet”, he added.

Mr. Mustapha however, thinks that the destruction of the school building by the rainstorm was as a result of the contractor’s use of substandard woods for roofing, adding “if the woods were of good quality, the roofing of the building wouldn’t have been ripped-off by the rainstorm”.

The Head-teacher of Monawara English and Arabic Primary School, Saeed Achilo told this reporter in an interview, that school activities have been affected as a result of the disaster and instead of closing at 1:30pm as they used to, they now close at 12:00 pm, a situation he attributed to the hot weather the children were often exposed to.

He disclosed that the Kindergarten 1 and 2 sit under an ebony tree as one class whereas Kindergarten 3 also make use of his office pending when the building would be rehabilitated.

Mr. Achilo noted with deep regrets, parents frequent withdrawal of their wards to enroll in different schools, because of the dangerous nature of the dilapidated structure and appalling conditions in the school.

The school, according to him lacked textbooks, sanitary facilities (toilet and urinals) and water storage system for drinking and washing of hands. “The absence of these facilities compel the children to always go into the bush to answer nature call as well as force them and their teachers to go into homes nearby to drink water when they are thirsty”, the head-teacher stressed.

Moreover, teachers in the school in their desire to create a change contributed from their pockets and re-roofed a thatched three unit classroom block, which hitherto hosted Kindergarten 1, 2 and 3 with corrugated roofing sheets, and it now host class four , five and six.

Mr. Saeed Achilo therefore, appealed to benevolent organizations to come to the aid of the school, saying “parents of the children lack the capacity to assist and until assistance come from elsewhere, conditions will remain like this or even become worse, even though the teachers are ready to teach and the children also willing to learn”.