USAID builds school block for Wamfie

Mr. Emmanuel Yeboah, Headmaster of the Methodist Primary and Junior High School at Wamfie in the Brong Ahafo region, has appealed to the government to extend the school feeding programme to the school.

He also appealed to the District Assembly to assist the school with an Information Communication Technology (ICT) center for computer studies.

Mr. Yeboah made the appeal when the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) handed over a three -unit classroom block to the school on Thursday.

Attached to the facility, provided by the USAID at the cost of GH¢91, 589.77 are an office for the headmaster, store and staff common room while construction work on a KVIP toilet is in progress.

The USAID handed over similar facility to the local Methodist Primary and JHS at Aboabo Number Four in Dormaa Municipality. The projects were supervised by Plan Ghana, an NGO.

Mr. Yeboah noted with concern the food some parents gave to their children could not sustain the children aged between six and 11 during the eight-hour school period.

This situation, Mr. Yeboah said, compelled some of the teachers to use their own money to fend for some of the children.

He said truancy and absenteeism were high among the pupils as some of them undertook menial jobs to fend for themselves.

Mr Yeboah said if the situation continued many of the girls would become dropouts, adding that last year two pregnant girls sat for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in the school.

Mr. Yeboah said congestion, lack of toilets, inadequate desks for both students and teachers and lack of water were problems that affected effective teaching and learning in the school with a population of 120 pupils.

He pointed out that, some of the students studied under dilapidated wooden structures while some of the existing school buildings had become death traps.

Mr. Yeboah expressed the worry that most of the students did not have knowledge about computer with the absence of an ICT center, though some teachers were computer literate willing to teach them.

Dr. Ruby Avotri, Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator for the Transition and Persistence (TAP) of Plan Ghana who handed over the keys to the building, constructed within three months, said the school block formed part of the USAID-Plan Ghana Educational Project being executed in the country.

Mr. Fred Twum-Barimah, Deputy District Director of Education, expressed concern about the high incidence of teenage pregnancy in the area and this had affected school enrolment in the area.**