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Any helping hand for Mmaampehia village?
Pupils of Mmaampehia writing on the floor during classes hours

Any helping hand for Mmaampehia village?

These days when apparently many part of the country are experiencing rainfall regularly, one sentence from a report in last week’s Spectator keeps returning to my mind: “pupils are asked to go home whenever the clouds gather”.

Unfortunately for such school children, when it is their turn to sit the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), as thousands are doing this week, there will be no allowances made for the school days and hours lost to bad weather, the days classes were rained off. 

The haunting expression, from the issue of June 11, was part of a news item headlined, ‘The plight of Mmaampehia pupils – Acquiring education by all means!!’ illustrated with disturbing pictures.

Metro TV journalist Gabriel O. Torgbor-Ashong wrote the Spectator report. He said when he was sent pictures of the Mmaampehia School, he was so shocked that he paid a visit there to “crosscheck for first-hand information”. 

He wrote: “Mmaampehia M/A Basic School is located at Mmaampehia village in the Obom-Domeabra Constituency within the Ga South Municipality. Enrolment in the school is high as many of the parents wish to see their wards educated; a right they never had.” 

In what is clearly an understatement, he cites “lack of adequate facilities” there. 

Notably:

(a) Kindergarten pupils either sit or lie on the bare floor to study;

(b) “The fortunate ones” perch on desks or sit on wooden slabs and blocks;

(c) During siesta, many sleep on the bare floor due to the limited number of mats.  

(d) Form one and class six pupils sit under sheds to study – structures they erected themselves; and,

(e) Lessons come to an abrupt end, and pupils are asked to go home whenever the (rain) clouds gather. Also,

(f) Exercise books, text books, pens and pencils, and other learning materials for the children are in short supply; and,

(g) Work on a classroom block being constructed by the Ga South Municipal Authority for the school has been at a standstill for months now.

Apparently fearing victimisation, the teachers declined to talk to the reporter, neither would they allow him to speak to the pupils. The parents, though, rushed to the school compound to pour out their frustrations to him.

“Before we left the village, though, a community elder, Nii Afla, said to me, ‘Let all Ghanaians know about the plight of these children so they extend a helping hand to them,’” the report stated.

The reporter notes that Dawud Anum Yemo is the Member of Parliament for the village and it falls under area of Municipal Chief Executive Jerry Akwei Thompson. 

I’m sure that like me, many who read about the Mmaampehia pupils would have loved to have had some explanations from Mr Yemo and Mr Thompson, about this school so close to the national capital and yet so lacking in the basics.

And forget about the whimsical, anti-women name of the village. Mmaampehia in Akan means ‘women don’t like poverty’ - even though it’s striking that a Ga community should have such an odd, obviously Akan name. Anyway, who likes poverty? The elimination of poverty is an ongoing UN campaign; and globally it has been central to almost every politician’s message from time immemorial. 

The issue is: what crime did children in such circumstances commit to suffer such deprivation and neglect by the state? Sadly, there are reportedly many schools even worse off than this one which so distressed the reporter.  

I also think of the reporter’s poignant observation: “Enrolment in the school is high as many of the parents wish to see their wards educated; a right they never had.” This time it’s not a case of parents who don’t see the importance of their children going to school.

Each time a report about a deprived school or school-under-trees surfaces, I ask myself, ‘another one?!’ Yet, we have been hearing from the government about remarkable success stories with such deprived schools, backed by impressive statistics!  

Has it all been lies? Or is it that our educational authorities simply don’t know the actual numbers of such schools so that each time the nation is reassured that the problem is being solved it’s not an accurate report, because in reality they don’t know how many such schools there really are? 

We are told that there are numerous governmental initiatives to tackle deprivation, poverty. Why then do we have so many of the Mmaampehias?

Is it a population issue, that because in recent years the National Family Planning Programme seems to have been put on the back burner, the number of births keeps outstripping the schools available and school inputs?  

Yet, in the midst of such appalling unfulfilled needs of pupils, schools and some communities, almost every sitting of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC) reveals colossal amounts of state money, being wickedly misapplied, unaccounted for or paid to ghosts. And the Auditor General’s Report for almost every year plays like a broken record, misuse of funds galore, but resulting in little or no punishment.

For example, why would an institution like the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) find it necessary to distribute Christmas hampers, and to the tune of GHȼ99,663 in 2012, as was revealed at the PAC this week? In view of the PURC’s functions, what was the purpose of such sweeteners, the hampers? 

If only district or municipal assembly officials and the Members of Parliament were compelled to enrol their children in such schools, those which have to abandon classes whenever the rain clouds gather! 

What crime did the parents commit against Ghana, the Ghana that has so much money to waste? All that those parents want is a better opportunity in life for their children than they had. And this is Ghana’s response? 

I have no way of knowing why the village was named Mmaampehia, but perhaps whoever gave it that name should have chosen more appropriately: ‘Yénso yéka Ghana ho! (‘We, too, are Ghanaians!’). 

 

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