THE Kukuom Agriculture Senior High School (SHS) in the Asunafo South District of the Brong Ahafo Region has no residential facility for teachers on the school campus making it difficult for the monitoring of boarding students in the night.
The school, which is one of the selected model schools established in 1976 as a government-assisted facility, can only boast a wooden structure which serves as dining and assembly hall and other dilapidated structures as girls and boys dormitories.
Neither the headmaster nor his assistant, the teaching and non-teaching staff live on the school campus which makes the supervision of the boarding students difficult while there is congestion in the few classrooms available.
This gloomy picture was painted by the Headmaster of the school, Mr Thomas Antwi, when the Regional Minister, Mr Kwadwo Nyamekye-Marfo, toured educational and health institutions in the Asunafo South and North municipalities of the region to acquaint himself with the challenges they were facing.
Mr Antwi told the Regional Minister and his entourage, including the Asunafo South District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr Fleance Danso, that the only infrastructure the school could boast of now was a GH¢53,000 three-unit classroom block which was about 70 per cent complete.
He added that the school was selected as one of the model schools by the previous regime but the project had been abandoned by the contractor while the road network in the school was in bad state.
The situation was also not different at the Ahafoman Senior High Technical School (ASTS) in the Asunafo North Municipality when the Regional Minister paid a similar visit.
The Headmaster of the school, Mr Yaw Adu-Gyamfi, said the school lacked classrooms, adding that at least an eight-unit classroom block was needed to help ease the congestion in the classrooms and also to accommodate the form one students who would be admitted in September, this year.
He stated that in response to the acute classroom accommodation, the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) had initiated a seven-unit classroom block project at a cost of GH¢35,000 which is at the foundation level and, therefore, appealed for assistance from the government to help complete the project.
Mr Adu-Gyamfi also appealed for repairs of the school’s water system that had broken down forcing students and staff to travel to town before getting water, reshaping of the school’s access road and the construction of a fence to prevent encroachers.
The Regional Minister in his response to the infrastructure needs of the two schools, said the government had released funds for the provision of additional classrooms for SHSs in the region for the first phase while more funds were expected for the second phase before September when the three-year SHS would begin.
He urged the assemblies where the two schools were located to assist the schools to meet some of the challenges, especially in the area of the access road and the repair of the schools’ water systems.
Mr Nyamekye-Marfo said the government was committed to meeting the infrastructure needs of both public basic and senior high schools in the country and would not renege on that responsibility, since it formed part of its agenda of investing in the people and for that matter, the youth.
He urged the students of both schools to desist from negative lifestyles such as drug abuse and sexual promiscuity that had the potential to jeopardise their future, and concentrate on their studies.
The Regional Minister and his entourage also visited the Kwapong Vocational/Technical School and the Sankore SHS, both in the Asunafo South District, where the authorities of both schools appealed for additional infrastructure in the area of classrooms, dormitories and residential facilities to accommodate teachers on the schools’ compound.
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