Tamale — The campus of the Ghana Senior High School (GHANASCO) in Tamale has become a free zone for goats, sheep, and cattle to loiter, due to lack of a fence wall around the school.
The animals, which seem to have no owners, do not only invade the school campus, dormitories and classrooms with impunity, but also practice indiscriminate open defecation all over the place.
Human beings have also joined the open defecation contest by easing themselves on the campus with careless abandon.
The Chronicle visited the school and discovered that GHANASCO, which is one of the premier Senior High Schools in the Northern Sector of Ghana, is faced with a myriad of challenges.
Prominent among the challenges is the lack of a fence wall around the school, which has exposed GHANASCO and its students to all kinds of threats from the nearby communities.
Apart from encroachment on their land by private developers, the school campus has become a thoroughfare for the community members, taxis, heavy trucks and motorbikes, which inarguably affect teaching and learning.
The school compound has also become a dumping ground and place of convenience for most of the community members, especially at night.
Speaking in an interview with The Chronicle, the Headmistress, Hajia Amina Musah, lamented that several efforts to dialogue with, or prevent the communities from littering around, defecating and using the school compound as a public space, have failed.
Many of them, she said, had verbally and physically attacked some of the school authorities and students for challenging their behaviour.
The Headmistress bemoaned the poor state of the school and, therefore, pleaded with the government to, without any further delay, come to their aid.
According to her, GHANASCO, which has a student population of about 2,400, lacks adequate classrooms, dormitories, an assembly hall, and other infrastructure.
She stated that it becomes difficult for students to have extra classrooms to study, especially when two subjects clash. Students sometimes are forced to study under trees.
However, one major frustration of Hajia Musah is the absence of a fence wall around the school, which, in her view, has increased the level of indiscipline among students.
According to the GHANASCO Headmistress, students, especially the females, have taken advantage of the situation to roam at night, or do their own thing at the blind side of the school authorities.
She, therefore, appealed to the Ghana Education Service (GES) and government to consider the fencing of the school, as a matter of importance, to ensure the safety of students and property, and also prevent animals and the community members from messing around the school compound.
Hajia Musah stated that water supply had been another challenge to the school. The school, she noted, always had to spend huge sums of money on purchasing water to carter for the needs of the students.
The Headmistress further revealed that GHANASCO required a deserving ICT block and a Science Resource Center which could accommodate more students.
The Senior Girls Prefect of the school, Seidu Fauzia Zila, also expressed worry about the deplorable state of the boys' dormitory and the assembly hall.
She also made a passionate appeal to the government, old students and various civil society organisations to provide the school with a means of transport.
GHANASCO, currently has no means of transport, after a court in Tamale confiscated their two buses.
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