Lambussie District dissatisfied with quality of school furniture

The Lambussie-Karni District Education Office has expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of furniture supplied to the district for distribution to schools.

It said the wood for the furniture which was often brought down from the South to the district for assembling was of poor quality and could not withstand the weather in the area.

Madam Vida Polkuu, the Lambussie-Karni District Girl Child Education Officer could not hide her sentiments when Mr. Bom Kofi Dy-yakah, District Chief Executive (DCE), presented another batch of 1,200 pieces of furniture to the office for onward distribution to some basic schools in the district.

“Everything is brought from down South; they only do the assembling here; small time the furniture gets destroyed and the carpenter cannot even maintain it because the wood is already rotten”, she said.

Madam Polkuu noted that a number of previous ones that had been supplied to the district were already broken down after few months of usage but could not be maintained because of the poor quality of the wood.

She, therefore, called for something to be done about the quality of the furniture supplied to the district not only to avoid wastage of resources but also to provide comfort to the students.

She thanked the government, the DCE and the Assembly for showing commitment to improving education delivery in the district, saying with the number of pro-poor educational interventions being implemented in the district, she hoped the performance would be boosted.

Mr. Dy-yakah acknowledged the poor quality of the furniture and said he would take the matter up with the appropriate authorities in order to have it addressed.

The furniture comprising 800 dual desks and 400 mono desks were funded by the Ghana Education Service (GES).

The DCE said government had built a number of schools under trees in the district, hence, the need to provide such schools with furniture to enable the pupils to sit comfortably to learn.

The DCE said the current situation regarding education in the district was not the best but expressed the hope that certain interventions that had been put in place by the government, together with the Assembly and the district education office, would gradually improve the situation.

He said since he assumed office, he had worked closely with others to revamp the District Education Oversight Committee (DEOC) to function effectively to improve on monitoring since it was one of the causes of poor education performance in the district.

Mr. Dy-yakah said he had also set up an annual award scheme for both students and teachers in the district in 2014, as a way of motivating them to give of their best.

He said he had also brought some examiners from Accra for them to interact with the students to boost their confidence level, and to teach them how to answer questions during examinations.

The DCE said under his leadership, the Assembly had put certain measures in place to enable teachers to reside in their communities to teach instead of trekking on daily basis which often made them ineffective at school.