Zorkor SHS students boycott food over fear of being poisoned by matron

Daily Guide has learnt that students of the Zorkor Senior High School in the Bongo District of the Upper East Region have resumed eating from the school’s dining hall, after refusing to eat their meals on Tuesday for fear of being poisoned by the matron of the school.

On Tuesday, December 4, it took the intervention of the school’s PTA executives and some board members to convince the students to calm down and eat their meals. They however resumed eating the next day.

On Tuesday, they bought and ate food from a nearby market, especially the boys among them.

The students are demanding that the matron of the school be sacked from her position and made to stay far away from the school’s kitchen, as they suspect that she may be angry due to an incident that occurred on campus on Saturday, December 1, 2018, for which reason she could poison their food to ‘punish’ them for exposing her. They want her to be sacked and replaced with a new matron.

According to the Zorkor SHS students, they had always suspected that something dubious was happening between some personnel in the kitchen and store departments, but kept quiet because they did not have enough evidence to confront the people they suspected.

Narrating a recent incident that occurred at the school to DAILY GUIDE, a student (name withheld) said on Saturday, December 1, some group of students known as “Jamaica Boys” had a hint that some foodstuffs belonging to the school were allegedly being taken out by the matron.

They informed other members and they quickly lined up along the exit path in the school. When the matron was driving out of the school that evening, they stopped her and demanded to inspect her car boot, which she refused and sped off.

Unfortunately for her, the rider of the school’s “Motor-King” was also spotted riding out of campus with some food items such as bags of maize, seven gallons of cooking oil, margarine, among others. They stopped him and after threatening to expose and report him to the headmaster of the school, he confessed that he had been asked by the matron to take the food items to the store keeper’s place.

The incident was reported to the headmaster on that Saturday evening. On Monday, December 3, he constituted a committee to investigate the case to ascertain the truth and come out with recommendations.

The students believe that the matron was stealing the food items and should be sacked and punished severely to serve as a deterrent to other matrons in other schools, whom they claim take away a chunk of the school’s foodstuffs, for which reason they cook “bad” food for students.

DAILY GUIDE could not contact the matron because her phones were off.

The committee is meeting persons mentioned by the students at a location in Bolgatanga. The committee is expected to complete its investigations and present a report by the close of Friday, December 7.