Krobo native builds bungalow for community school teachers
A Krobo native resident in Australia, Mercy Ladzer Tettey, has built a nine-unit teachers’ bungalow for the teachers of the Tsledom Municipal Assembly Basic School in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality in the Eastern Region.
The benefactor, who entertained the school and the community with food and drinks during the handover ceremony, also presented a television set to the school.
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The provision of the accommodation for the teachers has stabilised their stay in the school and helped to monitor the activities of the learners.
Hitherto, some of the teachers of the Tsledom Basic School stayed at Akosombo and walked a distance of 20 kilometres daily, as a result of the lack of accommodation, while others also slept in the classrooms.
Background
Giving the background to the Tsledom success story, the Eastern Regional School Health Education Programme (SHEP) Coordinator, Godfred Ofoe Caesar, said the Tsledom Municipal Basic School was one of the six basic schools that benefited from the establishment of Health Rooms which is also known in the schools as sick bays in October 2016.
Mr Caesar, who was then the SHEP Coordinator for the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality, said it was detected that the school pupils were suffering from yaws due to the lack of potable water for the community, which became a national issue.
According to Mr Caesar, Ms Tettey saw the plight of the Tsledom community on social media while in Australia and she was touched as an indigene of the area.
She, therefore, made an arrangement through him (Caesar) and some of her relatives and a borehole was drilled for the community, which gave the school community, as well as the teachers, a relief.
He said Ms Tettey later followed up to the community to inspect the borehole and that also made her see the plight of the teachers regarding accommodation.
Handover
At the handover ceremony of the bungalow to the school last Friday, an emotional Ms Tettey appealed to fellow Krobo indigenes home and abroad to support other communities in the Krobo area.
“My people, the economic situation is tough everywhere, including Australia, where I am, but I managed and came to help our needy Tsledom community with the borehole and the staff accommodation as you are seeing now.
“There are equally needy communities in our own Manya Krobo Traditional Area and we all need to come on board and give the little that we have to support,” she urged.
Ms Tettey stressed the need for her people to do away with the backbiting and ‘pull-him-down’ attitude and focus on development-oriented activities, such as what she did, to promote development of the area.
The head teacher of the school, David Teye, in his report, described the benefactor as the saviour of both the school and the Tsledom community.
He said in spite of challenges such as the lack of enough teachers in the school, the few teachers had been doing well and scored 100 per cent in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020, with 62.7 per cent in 2021 in the Basic Education Certificate Examination.
He also mentioned Nene Kwesi Detse I, another Krobo indigene resident in Canada, who had also supported the school by sponsoring 10 needy families for six months, provided 25 school bags to some of the school children, a generator, two solar batteries and 10 laptop computers, all for the school and 60 bags of cement for the community to reshape the road leading to the community in 2020 and 2021.
Mr Teye appealed to the Lower Manya Krobo education directorate to post more teachers to the school as there were only two teachers handling the junior high school currently.
The Dadematse (community leader) of Tsledom, Kwame Atter, on behalf of the community, expressed their profound gratitude to Ms Tettey, Mr Caesar and Nene Detse 1, for their assistance to the community.
The school presented a citation to Ms Tettey for the good work done for both the school and the community.