Pupils do not have Furniture to Sit on in schools - Member of Parliament reveals

Pupils in some basic schools in the Jirapa Municipality of the Upper West Region have no access to furniture.

The Member of Parliament for the Jirapa constituency, Honourable Cletus Seidu Dapilah has expressed dissatisfaction over the inability of the government to provide furniture for basic schools in the Jirapa Municipality of the Upper West region, forcing many of the pupils to sit on the bare ground for their lessons.

“In my district over 10,000 pupils do not have furniture to sit, this information is coming from the education office, over 10,000 pupils do not have furniture to sit that is kindergarten, primary and Junior High Senior.

"So you get up bath your child, dress your child and the child will go and be sitting on the floor to write and when you talk people think that is politics, how can this be politics” he fumed.

He said the New Patriotic Party(NPP) government is gagging headmasters of schools in Ghana from expressing their concerns over the porous nature of the education system in the country.

Adding that, many of the officers in the education sector fear being victimized hence their silent nature. The MP stressed that such an act has affected the Senior High School education too.

Honourable Cletus further indicated that the suppressing nature of the Nana Addo led NPP government has rendered heads of the various schools speechless even at meetings accentuating that “they all sit down like school children, whatever the Minister or the government of the day comes to tell them that is it, they say go and do this, don’t tell us what you think, these are people who just didn’t become headmasters they climbed through the ladder, they were teachers, some became Senior housemaster, assistant headmasters and became headmasters” Honourable Cletus noted.

The MP who was speaking on Pan Africa TV’s Good Morning Africa programme on Monday, May 31, 2021, monitored by Abdul Sammed Gurundari of Soireenews says the government could have been advised by the headmasters of the various Senior High Schools on the Free Senior High School programme if they were allowed to talk.

The conversation was sentenced on the recent concerns that sections of Ghanaians have been expressing over the manner in which the Nana Addo’s government is being run for which many believed that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is running a “culture of silence” administration though the president denied such.

Honourable Cletus again noted that almost all the independent institutions in Ghana are being gagged by the government from expressing their views on matters that seem not to be working for the best interest of the nation.

“Look all independent institutions or all the institutions in this country are being gagged from talking so the president cannot say there is no culture of silence in this country, headmasters were been transferred, some were been removed from offices for talking” he stated.

He said the double-track system of education is not helping the country indicating that the students rather spend more days in the house and only spend few days at the school emphasizing that such a system is not healthy for the country’s education sector.

“You send your ward to school and that child will go and spend 39 days in school and come home for 90 and something days and the president think that this is the education he is offering to the people of this country.

"Ghanaians let's rise up. This is not education, which child can learn under such circumstances, the child goes to school for 39 days and comes home for 3 months!” he fumed.

 Abdul Sammed Gurundari, Upper West