The Headmaster of Binduri Community Day Senior High School in the Upper East Region, Emmanuel Nabrose, has confirmed that first and second-year students staged a protest and halted school activities due to the school caterer’s failure to provide them with food for two consecutive months.
According to Nabrose, the students voiced their discontent and subsequently vacated the school premises on Tuesday, June 11, 2023.
However, during an interview on A1 Radio’s Daybreak Upper East Show, Mr. Nabrose addressed the matter and revealed that the caterer had been refusing to prepare meals for the students since May 2023. Despite repeated appeals made by the school authorities and various stakeholders at the district and regional levels, the caterer remained non-compliant with their responsibilities.
“We reported the situation to the board chairman, the district director of education and there is nothing we can do. This situation the caterer has failed to cook for the student for two months. According to the caterer, the government is owing her and there is nothing I can do; I can’t use my salary to pay her. So, it is serious.”
He added that he has briefed the School Feeding Coordinator for the Free Senior High Schools in the Upper East Region, Anamboyine Kofi since the beginning of the issue, yet nothing fruitful has come up.
The Regional School Coordinator for the Free SHS through a text stated “The issue has been brought to my attention. I spoke with the Vendor providing lunch. She said she is currently organising food items and the needed ingredients to start cooking. This morning we spoke.”
Meanwhile, the Binduri District Director of Education, John Soka Jaggery, has reassured the students that the caterer will soon resume to resolve the ongoing issue.
Speaking on the same platform, the MP for the Binduri Constituency, Abdulai Abanga expressed a high level of surprise that the students would riot over what he thought to be a mundane issue.
“It is a day school so it is surprising to me that the students took this decision to riot because of the lunch. They would normally be fed in the house before they come to school and after school hours, when they go back home, the normal thing is that when they get to the house, they would be fed. So for them to riot and decide not to study unless we serve them with their hot meal, I think we should advise the students that what they would be losing looking at the number of days they would be out of school.”
Mr. Abanga additionally explained that the management of the school is to blame.
“We have to look at the management of the school because this is an issue if it was ongoing, the stakeholders’ attention would have been drawn to it. I am sure that if I had heard about it much earlier, I could have followed up,” he said.
The NDC is meanwhile worried about the situation at the Binduri Community Day Senior High School and has said if the government is not proactive, the situation could deteriorate.
The Upper East Regional Communication Officer for the NDC, Jonathan Abdallah Salifu made these comments when he spoke to Mark Smith on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show.
“We all know the situation but they try to cover it up. But now, schools are being closed down and look, if care is not taken, more schools would follow. What has happened in Binduri is setting the pace. I am surprised because this is the constituency of the Regional Minister. As chairman of REGSEC, is he telling me that he did not know that there was a problem, an underground issue that had been raging since 29th May till yesterday? Is that what he is telling me? Then he is not fit to sit there as Minister,” he said.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
