Danger Looms As Furniture Deficit Hits 1000 New Entrant Students--At Mepe St. Kizito Senior High /Tech
The problem is said to be affecting teaching and learning at the school and has the potential of derailing the academic activities of the first year students.
Freeman Koryekpor 
The lack of furniture, particularly for the first year students who were admitted at Mepe St. Kizito Senior High Technical School in the North Tongu District of the Volta Region is gradually affecting academic activities of the school.
The problem is said to be affecting teaching and learning at the school and has the potential of derailing the academic activities of the first year students.
The challenge is not new for about one thousand (1000) first year students who have struggled to cope with this life threatening situation.
The lack of furniture forces many of the new entrants to sit on one bench in Mepe St. Kizito Senior High Technical School to learn, which is not uncomfortable.
Worse of it all is that some students stand to learn, coupled with lack of enough classrooms and learning materials, a situation which has compelled students to study under trees.
Investigations have revealed that there are not enough beds, dinning tables and chairs for the students who were in the boarding house of the school to use.
And that it is disheartening to see many students stand and take their meals at the dining hall," the Soireenews.com has gathered.
Some of the students at the time of Soireenews’s visit were observed seated on the broken seats, while huge number of them have shared one beach.
The scores of the affected students who spoke with Soireenews.com on condition of anonymity lamented how uncomfortable it was for them to sit on one short bench with huge number of their colleagues to learn.
“Using this bench is not convenient for us at all,” said the worried students.“It’s too short for our age and we suffer to bend to be able to write accurately. It’s really uncomfortable.”
Another simply said “This is not right, we are not kids so how can we use beaches meant for kids at our age? We appeal to the government and the authorities to provide us with desks immediately.”
The lack of access to these facilities and items in the school is hindering smooth teaching and learning of Mepe St Kizito Senior High Technical School, which is a category C school and one of the senior high schools in Mepe Traditional Area of the North Tongu.
The executive member of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) of Mepe St. Kizito Senior High Technical School who spoke to Soireenews.com on condition of anonymity on Saturday March 18, 2023 stated that the management of the school in the meeting on Wednesday March 11, 2023 informed the PTA about the current plight of first-year students who reported to school.
He noted that these situations not auger well for the students which are affecting their academic work.
"The school management has tried their best. They say some desks will be coming but as to the time they would come in, we don't know. Because the students are not seated comfortably, so it doesn’t give room for them to concentrate.
"Because we don’t have enough desks, some students sit on the laps of their colleagues. The issue of lack of desks cuts across in the North Tongu District but the situation in our school is different," a teacher at Mepe St Senior Technical School also spoke to Soireenews.com on condition of anonymity.
According to the teacher, the situation is so bad, but the school cannot ask parents to buy tables and chairs, since that would be explained to mean exploitation.
To this end, he appealed to benevolent stakeholders in the education sector and corporate institutions to support education in the school.
