ASESEWA SHS faces threat of cholera … as students lack decent toilet facility

From Isaac Akwetey-Okunor, Asesewa

Students of Asesewa Senior High School (SHS), the only second cycle institution in the Upper Manya District of the Eastern Region could be hit with cholera, if authorities do nothing about the current sanitation situation in the school.

 

The school, which has a student population over nearly one thousand five hundred, cannot boast of a decent toilet facility. They are using make shift Kumasi Ventilated Improve Pit (KVIP) structure. The visible cracks on the walls of the facility and its related sanitation problems are posing a serious danger to the students.

 

Students have to queue before, during and after class hours, besides taking off their uniforms before attending to nature’s call.

 

Unfortunately, those who cannot control themselves in the event of their friends keeping relatively long in the facility defecate in the nearby bushes.

What is more disturbing is the manner in which the authorities in the school have managed the situation, by deliberately refusing to open a new water closet toilet facility constructed by the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETfund).

 

Some of the students, who granted interview to this paper on condition of anonymity, expressed grave concern over the development in the school.

 

Not even the visible cracks on the walls of the toilet, coupled with its poor hygienic condition would touch the heart of authorities of the Assembly to commission the newly constructed toilet facility for use.

 

The poor sanitation situation of the school took a different dimension last week, following a heavy downpour in the area, and without a good drainage system in the school, all the water gathered around the poor toilet facility.

 

 

Speaking to the paper, the Assemblyman of the area, Benjamin Kwasi Odoi, who was saddened by the event, said not even the numerous petitions to the District Assembly to come to the aid of the school have yielded any result.

 

“The Aseembly keeps on telling me that they will send Engineers to the school to see what they can do about it, but nothing has been done since”, he said.

 

All frantic attempts to get the school authorities comment on the development proved futile.

Short URL: http://thechronicle.com.gh/?p=47999