Tertiary institutions get ready to reopen - Disinfection exercise takes place
Preparations are underway for the reopening of 16 tertiary institutions in the country.
In line with that a comprehensive strategy to disinfect the schools and make them safe and secure for reopening is currently underway.
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Under the plan, the 16 institutions are billed to be disinfected in the coming week.
Meanwhile, a disinfection exercise was carried out at the University of Ghana in Accra yesterday under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Education in collaboration with Zoomlion Ghana Ltd.
Launching the strategy at the University of Ghana, the Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, said it followed a directive passed down from the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, for all tertiary and second-cycle institutions to be fumigated and disinfected before the final-year students returned to prepare and complete their exit examinations.
He said the ministry was committed and ready to support Zoomlion and other waste management companies to disinfect and fumigate basic, secondary and tertiary educational institutions in the country.
Dr Prempeh charged all the heads of educational institutions and municipal/district chief executives to engage with the respective directors of education and monitor the exercises in schools in their jurisdictions.
Launch
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Ebenezer Oduro Owusu, said the management of educational institutions would closely monitor the disinfection and fumigation exercises being carried out by Zoomlion to make sure they were successful and effective.
Similar exercises, he said, were carried out in government institutions and agencies as part of the fight against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
Prof. Owusu, who doubles as the Chairman of Vice-Chancellors, Ghana, encouraged Zoomlion to tackle the exercise in earnest in order to achieve the objective for which it was set.
Effective work
The Managing Director (MD) of Zoomlion Ghana Ltd, Mrs Florence Larbi, gave an assurance that the company would do a good job to help curb the spread of COVID-19.
Background
At the recent Minister’s Weekly Briefing on COVID-19 to shed light on the phased easing of restrictions, the Minister of Education had said tertiary institutions would reopen to final-year students from June 15 for academic work to begin and end on July 24.
Final examinations, he said, would be conducted from July 27 to August 21.
He said SHSs would reopen to final-year students on June 22 for six weeks of academic work up to July 31, this year, after which they would write their final exams from August 3 to September 4, this year.
Meanwhile, second-year Gold Track students of SHSs would also be in school for six weeks, starting from June 22 to July 31, when they would proceed on vacation, he said.
In the case of final-year students in JHSs, Dr Prempeh said they would be in school for 11 weeks for academic work from June 29 to September 11, following which they would write the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) from September 14 to September 18, this year.