Extortion at Nkwanta-North District Education Directorate?
The Nkwanta-North District Directorate of Education in the Volta Region has been accused of turning the directorate into a money-making venture at the expense of quality education.
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The directorate is alleged to have extorted money amounting to GH¢72,900 in a recruitment exercise that has been shrouded in shady deals.
Information gathered by the Daily Graphic revealed that 540 people who applied to be recruited as teachers to fill vacancies in classrooms, were made to pay GH¢135 each for the verification of their certificates and a selection interview held last week.
Although it is not clear how many of the applicants will be recruited, a source at the district education office said the figure would not exceed 30 people.
"The issue is worrying, considering the fact that not more than 30 people out of the 540 will be recruited; meanwhile they are made to pay this money," the highly placed source at the district directorate of education revealed.
Confirmation
Some of the applicants who spoke to the Daily Graphic on condition of anonymity said they could not understand why other districts which were carrying out similar exercises did not collect such amounts from the applicants as was being done in the Nkwanta-North district.
"After they took GH¢35 from us for certificate verification, they have again sent us text messages asking us to pay an additional GH¢100 before we attend the interview for recruitment. We have cross-checked from other districts and nothing of this sort is taking place in those districts," one of the sources said.
The Daily Graphic has samples of the text messages that were sent to the applicants requiring them to pay the money before the interview.“You are hereby invited to attend a recruitment interview scheduled for Wednesday, October 11, at the Nkwanta-North district education office at exactly 7:30 a.m.
“Come along with the following: GH¢100 for the interview and processing of documents, four passport-sized photographs, birth or baptismal certificate, bank details and other relevant documents,” the message read.
No response
Efforts made by the Daily Graphic to get the response of the District Director of Education, Mr Maxwell Gyambiby-Asong, on the issue hit the rocks as he remained tight-lipped.
In a rather uncompromising manner, he said: “I am not ready to speak to any media person because these are administrative issues that are not expected to be put in the public domain.
When asked whether he could confirm or refute the allegations, he stressed, “I said I will not speak on this issue and that is it.”
Poor performance
Meanwhile, parents, the Ghana National Association (GNAT) and Headteachers Association in the district are worried that such illegal collection of money was going on at a time the academic performance of the district in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) had taken a nosedive.
Statistics at the district education office showed that the average performance of the district in the BECE in the last five years has drastically declined.
The district has never gone beyond 30 per cent in the last five years with the worst results being that of 2016 when the it recorded 11.8 per cent.
Some teachers at the district said the downward trend in the performance of the pupils was because of the decision taken by district education directorate to always buy question papers for terminal examinations from a company outside the district.
They said even though parents paid so much to the district education office for the purchase of the questions, that arrangement failed to achieve the desired results because the teachers were not involved in the setting of questions.
DCE
Speaking to the Daily Graphic , the District Chief Executive (DCE) for Nkwanta-North, Mr Jackson Jakayi, said his attention had been drawn to the issue at the education directorate.
He said he had invited the district education director to his office to address the issue and gave an assurance that efforts would be made to ensure that any malpractice was addressed.
