In May 2022, the website carried a report that brought to the fore that since 2012, some public basic schools in the Kassena-Nankana Municipality of the Upper East Region had not received furniture from successive governments despite the increased enrollment of pupils.
Out of the over one hundred and four public basic schools in the area, not a single school has adequate furniture in the classrooms.
The situation, however, caused discomfort amongst pupils, especially those who are in such classrooms. As a result, some of them have begun absenting themselves from school.
On a visit to some of the schools by our reporter, Moses Apiah, it became clear that some of the pupils who are able to go to school do not only have to sit on the bare floor, but also often lie on their bellies to learn.
Speaking to some of the students, they noted that some of their colleagues have stopped schooling due to the lack of furniture in the classrooms.
One said “I don’t like sitting on the floor, it makes my uniform dirty. I want to sit on a chair.”
Another one said, “my brother told me that he will no longer come to school until there is furniture in the classroom.”
The MCE for Kassena Nankana Municipal Assembly’s attention was drawn to the situation. Touching on the issue in a recent interview of A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show, the MCE for Kassena Nankana, Joseph Adongo explained that more than 400 dual desks have been supplied this year. An additional 200 have been procured and are awaiting distribution.
“We have provided furniture, for now, over 400 dual desks. We have done the distribution. Now we have another 200 [desks] that have come and we are yet to do the distribution,” he said.
Additionally, the Assembly is focusing on providing adequate furniture for public basic schools in the Municipality.
“We’ve realised in our meetings that mostly we concentrate on the Senior High and Junior High [schools] leaving the basic level, kindergarten and all those things, so as an Assembly we agreed that we also need to build our foundation. We have had to procure these hexagonal desks for our kindergartens for them to be using,” he said.
Mr. Adongo added that under the guidance of the MP for Navrongo Central, Sampson Tangombu Chiragiaa, some 250 desks had been procured and distributed with 250 more in the offing.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
