The poor state of most roads in the Upper Manya Krobo district, an agrarian district in the Eastern Region remains a major challenge to teachers as this situation forces them to travel long distances on a daily basis to discharge their duties.
Teachers have said the unavailability of accommodation in the district for them leaves them frustrated.
According to them, the situation also affects academic activities as they say enough money of theirs is used as transportation to and from school.
GhanaWeb visited one of such schools in the district, the Ahabarsu D/A Basic school to observe the situation.
Frank Terkper, a basic two teacher at the school who has taught there for the past two years. He is a resident at Otrokper.
The teacher’s only means of reaching the school every morning and back home after school hours is a faulty, rickety motorbike.
Alternatively, he and other teachers without the bike spend a fortune relying on commercial motorcycles to reach the school and back home.
“There’s no accommodation in the school so we’re appealing to any NGO who can build us a teachers’ bungalow that can limit our transportation or debt because from Otrokper to Ahabarsu, we take okada and the okada, in and out every day cost us about Ghc20.00,” he lamented.
Detailing how the situation affected the work of the teachers and general academic activities in the school, Mr. Frank Terkper opined that housing the teachers in the community will greatly enhance teaching and learning in the school.
He said, “As a teacher if we should get a bungalow in the community, I think teaching and learning would be effective because we’ll have access to the community members and then the children. We can visit then at homes and then see to their problems,” he said.
GhanaWeb watched in bewilderment as he relied on the assistance of his pupils to push his bike to force a start to enable him go home.
Asare Emmanuel Partey, a basic five teacher who has been teaching in the school over the past six years said the situation is particularly worse during the rainy season as the road gets soggy.
“The road is not all that good,” he said.
“When it’s the rainy season like this, we face a lot of problems, a lot challenges when we’re coming here. Even this morning when coming here, I fell on the way because the road is not good,” narrated the teacher.
According to him, the situation left teachers exhausted before beginning the day’s activities. He said despite persistent appeals to the local Assembly to address the problem, no favourable feedback has been received.
He appealed to the government, NGOs and other stakeholders to come to the aid of the teachers and pupils.
Eleven-year-old Nateh Solomon Teye, a class five pupil complained of the effects of the lack of school feeding on their education. He said, “we don’t have a school feeding program in our school so when we come to school and we are hungry and the teacher is teaching, we don’t understand so we beg the government to give us food in the school.”
Dadematse of Ahabarsu, Terkper Samson expressed regret at the teachers being forced to commute every day from other communities. Asked what interventions he has made to get the issue addressed, he answered that the attention of the Upper Manya Krobo District Assembly has been drawn severally to the problem.
Meanwhile, PRO of the Upper Manya Krobo Education Directorate, Mr. Charles Kartey Adabah when reached for his comment on the situation said, the problem of accommodation for teachers was not only limited to the Ahabarsu D/A basic school but a widespread problem affecting about 90% of the 96 public basic schools in the district.
“With the issue of accommodation, it is not only that particular school, it cuts across the district,” he said adding that the okada serves as the major form of transportation for teachers who are forced to put up in different communities other than where they teach.
According to him, only communities such as the district capital, Asesewa, Sekesua, Apimsu, Akateng and a few others had teachers living in the communities.
DCE for Upper Manya Krobo, Honorable Joe Sam admitted being aware of the situation. To address the problem, he said he had deployed engineers from the Assembly to assess the situation. “I’ve asked the engineers at the Assembly to work on it (accommodation) and I’ve also asked them to visit the areas and see the nature of the roads that they’re talking about so I’m yet to receive a report from them.”
He added that the engineers were also expected to present the cost of establishing one bungalow based on which it would be in the position to estimate the total cost of bungalows for teachers in the affected communities.
