The Ministry of Education has directed the Ghana Education Service (GES) to ensure that teachers do not engage pupils in their farms and other forms of child labour in all schools across the country.
A Deputy Minister for Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, gave the directive and expressed displeasure that some teachers who are tasked to teach pupils rather engage them in hazardous activities.
This phenomenon, he decried, has sometimes lead to dire consequences.
Rev. Ntim Fordjour gave the directive on Monday when he led a government delegation to commiserate with the families of the nine students who got drowned last Friday whilst crossing the Oti river after working on the farm of their Headmaster.
Other members of the delegation were the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Prof. Kwasi Opoku Amankwa; the Northern Regional Police Commander, COP Timothy Yoosa Bonga; Regional Director of Education, Dr Peter Attafuah as well as a team of Clinical Physiologist and counsellors among others.
The Deputy Minister said President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the entire Ghanaian populace were saddened by the news of the death of the nine.
He assured the families and the people of Saboba of Government’s readiness to ensure that the practice of engaging pupils in farms, which were very high in the area would be stopped.
Stop pleading
Rev. Ntim Fordjour charged people in leadership positions to desist from pleading for teachers caught indulging in such nefarious acts by allowing the laws of the land to deal with them.
The Deputy Minister said the government was ready to support the families of the deceased.
This, according to him, is the reason Clinical Physiologist and counsellors are being sent to the community for a couple of weeks to help the pupils, teachers and families of the dead pupils.
He was upbeat that, the right stringent measures would be put in place to curb all forms of abuses against pupils and students at all levels of education in the country.
Interdiction
The Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Prof. Kwasi Opoku Amankwa, said the GES has since interdicted the Headmaster of the school based the Code of Conduct of the service whilst waiting for the police to continue with its investigation into the case.
Consequently, he has warned all teachers who have the habit of engaging school children in any form of child labour to stop before they are caught by the long hands of the laws of the country.
Background
Last Friday, around 3 pm, 32 school children who were returning from the farm of the Headmaster of the St. Charles JHS, at Saboba got drowned when two of the boats carrying the children capsized.
Out of the 31 children, 22 of them were able to swim across the river while the remaining nine got drowned.
This led to the arrest of the Headmaster, Mr Charles Chinji, who has since been remanded into police custody pending further investigation and prosecution.
The Headmaster has been charged for murder and subsequently remanded into police custody by Tamale Circuit court until 29th November 2021.
Govt commiserates with families
Meanwhile, government has commiserated with the Chiefs and families of the nine children who got drowned.
Courtesy call
The government delegation paid a courtesy call on the Paramount Chief of Saboba, Uchabobor Bawon Mateer Sakojim at his Palace.
The team also joined worshipers at the local Catholic Church where a special thanksgiving service was held for the nine departed children.
Rev. Ntim Fordjour and the delegation later met the believed families at the Saboba District Assembly conference hall where each of the bereaved families was presented with two thousand cedis.
The Director-General of GES, Prof. Kwasi Opoku Amankwa, pledged to collaborate with the traditional leaders to bring sanity and help improve teaching and learning in schools in the area.
He pledged to ensure that supervision in all schools across the country would be intensified to control any form of abuse to all school children irrespective of where they were located in the country.
The Paramount Chief of Saboba, Uchabobor Bawon Mateer Sakojim praised Government for supporting the traditional authorities and the believed families.
He said the traditional authorities are prepared to put in place the right measures to bring sanity into schools in the area to curb the issue of headmasters and teachers sending school children to farm during instructional hours.
The Paramount chief appealed to Government as a matter of urgency to overhaul activities at the Saboba District Education Directorate to help improve the educational development of the area.
