Pupils and teachers of Yirenkyikrom D/A Primary School in the Eastern region are struggling to cope with human excreta that takes over their classrooms.
Some faceless residents of Yirenkyikrom in the Kwahu-South District of the Region have turned the town’s only primary school into a toilet.
With no windows in the classrooms of the school located on an open compound, some community members jump in to ease themselves.
“People come to defecate in the classrooms. My classroom has no windows. It makes it easy for them to enter and defecate,” a teacher, Daniel Gyewu, told TheGhanaReport.com.
He says although it is not a daily affair, they were worried that they have to be cleaning human excreta in an academic environment.
He, therefore, appealed to the authorities to come to the aid of the school.
It is, however, not the first time a school is complaining about a community defecating in their classrooms.
Not new
On August 1, 2019, pupils of Pakro Roman Catholic Primary and Junior High School, near Nsawam, in the Akuapim South District of the Eastern Region, embarked on a demonstration against incessant defecation in their classrooms.
The schoolchildren with the support of their teachers marched through the streets of Pakro Community holding placards with inscriptions such as “stop defecating in our classrooms ‘we are tired of cleaning faeces’.
According to the pupils, they are forced to scrub off human faeces every day and throw away used condoms found in their classrooms by morning.
Challenges
Apart from the challenges with the classroom defecation, Yirenkyikrom D/A Primary School has only five teachers from Kindergarten to Primary Six.
In the face of this dire lack, the school has combined its classes. Primary one and two are combined, so is Primary three and four and then five and six also join to make one class.
It means Primary two students study Primary one subjects and lessons. This is replicated in the other combined classes.
According to the teacher, the school is expecting newly posted teachers to help ease the human resource crisis there.
He does not know when the teachers will join the school.
Beyond combining classes, the school also grapples with educational infrastructure.
Three or four pupils share a dual desk meant for two.
He told theghanareport.com, packing students to a desk does not help in getting them to concentrate, as they are in the discomfort.
The trained teacher is also concerned about the state of school uniforms used by his pupils.