North Tongu DCE condemns assault on teachers

Mr Richard Collins Arku, North Tongu District Chief Executive (DCE), has strongly condemned what he calls the physical and verbal assault of teachers by some community members over one issue or another, describing it as “improper, callous, and backward”. 

He advised that the practice be stopped, saying, it was a panacea for underdevelopment for any such community who failed to guard its members from the bad practice, and appealed to all community leaders to take a cue.

Mr Arku said this while commissioning a magnificent five-unit single room teachers’ residential block with ancillary facilities, including kitchens and porches, for the Ayiwata Basic School on Monday at Ayiwata, a deprived farming community in the district.

The facility, built by the District Assembly from its District Development Fund (DDF), also has a three-unit detached bathrooms and a two-unit place of convenience.

The DCE said teachers as role models were important assets to help mould children for the future and should therefore be motivated to give out their best, “but some parents instead attack them”.

Mr Arku entreated all communities to avoid the practice and directed them to refer any anti-teacher sentiments to school management teams, the Education Directorate or the Assembly or else they will lose their teachers and no teacher will accept postings there.

On the commissioning, Mr Arku said the facility had come to ease challenges teachers of the school faced, and expressed the hope that it would also stop the chronic absenteeism among them, making them to play their model roles to pupils better.

“The issue of teachers residing in towns several kilometers away due to lack of residential accommodation here, resulting in them frequently absenting from school, in rainy seasons particularly, will now be a thing of the past,” he said.

Mr Arku noted that teaching and learning would also increase and appealed to the community, parents and pupils to collaborate with the teachers for improved academic fortunes of the pupils.

He promised to get a water tank supplied for rain water harvesting for the school, as well as consider completing a CHPs Compound project in the town to bring health care nearer to the community.

Government, he said, was on course in meeting its obligations in the supply of social needs of communities, and urged communities to play their sides of the role well for the expected development impact.

Mr Mawuli Vorsah, Assembly Member of the area, appealed for the construction of Adidokpawui-Ayiwa-Ayiwata-Wuxor Old Town and New Town road to make it motorable for mainly traders and pupils along that stretch, particularly in the rainy seasons.

He further noted that a clinic in the town will save expectant mothers and the sick from travelling the bad roads to hospitals at Battor, Juapong, Mafi-Zongo or Adidome, all about 30-40 kilometers away for safe delivery and health care. 

Mr Vorsah noted that with the school’s six-room gated school block, replacing the holding of classes under trees, formerly in addition to the new residential block, the school, with about 250 pupils will improve with the proper management by all stakeholders.

He announced a new school established by the communities at Agorkpoe to cater for kids in that part of his electoral area, who could not cross the Ayiwa stream to school daily at Ayiwata, is now at primary four level with about 300 pupils and appealed for the Assembly’s help.

Mr Joseph Adeti, Assistant Director in charge of Supervision at the District Education Directorate, told the people there was scarcity of teachers in the system and they must therefore boost the morale and retain those with them or they will lose them and will not have replacement soon.

Wuxor Old and New Towns, Ayiwa and Ayiwata are main communities that feed the Ayiwata school of about 250 pupils.GNA