Hon. Stephen Yakubu, the Upper East Regional Minister, has assured all public schools affected by Wednesday’s rainstorm of government’s support to fix affected structures for continuity of academy activities.
He said the Regional Office of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) had compiled data of affected schools for special appeal for support from the GetFund, Ministry of Education and possibly the Office of His Excellency the President.
Until the support comes, the Minister advised the affected schools to engage the services of carpenters to fix some of the roofs which were not completely ripped off, to provide some level of comfort for the students to continue with studies.
Hon. Yakubu was speaking to Journalists in the Region after he led a team of officials from NADMO, the Ghana Education Service, the Regional Coordinating Council and the Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly to inspect the level of destruction caused by the rainstorm on school property at the Bolgatanga Girls Senior High School (BOGISS).
The Regional Minister bemoaned the annual rainstorm disaster in the Region, and charged building Constructors to ensure proper roofing sheets and woods were used on structures to curtail the yearly problem of roofs ripped off with the least rainstorm.
He said governments have had to spend lots of resources which could have been channelled into other projects to the benefit of the citizenry, to renovate and fix rainstorm disasters on buildings which could be prevented.
Hon. Yakubu emphasized the need for building Contractors and experts in building contraction to pay critical attention to the roofing of structures, especially public structures to solve the annual problem.
He advised managements of public buildings to take advantage of government’s Green Ghana project and plant trees on their premises to derive the desired benefits of trees including protection of their buildings from storms.
The Regional Director of NADMO, Mr. Asamani Jerry, who was part of the Minister’s entourage, told the Journalists that in April this year, the region experienced about four different types of storms which affected schools, churches, clinics and private properties wealth several million of cedis.
Some of the affected schools apart from BOGISS, he disclosed, were the Sandema Senior High School (SHS), Sandema Senior High Technical School (SHTS), Paga SHS, Bongo SHS, Gbewa College of Education, Navrongo SHS (NAVASCO), Kongo SHS among others.
The Headmistress of BOGISS, Madam Patricia Anaba described the damage caused by the storm on school property as devastating, saying that the situation greatly interrupted academic work.
She said the roofs of the Home Economics Department, Science Laboratory, the French Learning Centre for the entire region, dormitories, library, conference hall and teachers bungalows were affected.
She said students in affected dormitory blocks were moved to join their colleagues in other dormitories which created congestion in the various dormitories, and therefore appealed to government to support the school to enable them prepare their candidates for the final examination this year.