Zebilla Senior High Technical grapples with accommodation challenges
Accommodation challenges are still a problem in the Zebilla Senior High Technical School.
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The school, located in the Bawku West District of the Upper East Region, has a student population of over 1,400, but housing the students in proper dormitories, according to the Assistant Headmaster in charge of Administration of the school, Mr Bukari Abdulai, remained a challenging issue.
A field visit to the school during the monitoring of oil-funded projects in the Upper East and West regions of the country by the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) and some members of the Institute of Financial and Economic Journalists (IFEJ), revealed a rather alarming situation with respect to accommodation.
Trunks belonging to students were placed outside to make room for students, while a toilet facility in the school had been converted into a boys’ dormitory to house about six students.
Outstretched facilities
Mr Abdulai told the Daily Graphic that the school’s dormitories were badly overstretched, hence the urgent need to complete the construction of the two-storey dormitory for the school.
“In fact we need it urgently because one of our dormitories got burnt in 2014 so we converted some of the classrooms into dormitories. That had had an effect on our classroom accommodation. The early completion of this project will help us to relocate the students to this block so we can have this classroom free for students to use,” he said.
He said although the school had challenges with accommodation for both its staff and students, the fire that gutted the boys’ dormitory in 2014 worsened their plight.
“One other major challenge is with staff accommodation. About 70 per cent of the teachers live outside the school,” he said.
Although progress had been made on the ongoing dormitory project, Mr Abdulai explained that the lack of funds had delayed the project, since the contractor comes to site as and when funds are released.
“As far as I am aware, the funding is from the Ministry of Education. The contractor will come to site then after some time he will leave, and when we try to reach him, he would complain that he had run out of money. After sometime, he will come back and then leave again,” he said.
He, however, added that the contractors had returned to work with an assurance that the work would be completed before the end of the 2016 deadline.
“They have returned to work and they are assuring us that they will finish, so we are hoping they keep to their word,” he said.
Several attempts
According to him, the school had written many reminders to the relevant authorities on the need to speed up the construction of the dormitory considering the school’s accommodation challenges, adding that the school was also constructing a separate administration block which was also receiving government funding, and explained that the projects were running simultaneously because they were awarded to separate contractors.
“They are all separate contracts. This project started and there was also the need for an administration block so that project was also approved and it started,” he said.
PIAC monitoring
The Chairman of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC), the committee with oversight responsibility for the management of oil revenues, Professor Paul Kingsley Paul Buah- Bassuah, said over GH¢80,000 was allocated for the project in 2015 from oil revenues.
He said the project started with funding from the Ministry of Education and the top-up came from oil revenues in 2014 and released through the Ministry of Education.
