Government and private senior high schools (SHSs) in the Western Region on Thursday had their turn of the ongoing third phase disinfection exercise in secondary schools across the country.
The national exercise follows a directive by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to the Ministry of Education (MoE) and Ghana Education Service (GES) to ensure that all SHSs in the country were disinfected before reopening on October 5, 2020 for Form Two students. And it is also aimed at keeping the schools’ environment safe from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
Thursday’s exercise saw Zoomlion Ghana Limited (ZGL), the company undertaking the exercise, disinfect a number of schools in the region. These included Fijah SHS, Takoradi, St John’s SHS, Takoradi Senior High School, Takoradi among others.
Other institutions that equally benefited from the exercise were Sekondi, Community Development Vocational & Technical Institute, Takoradi and a community park at CK Mann Anaji in the Effia Kwesimintsim Municipal.
At Fijah SHS, which was the first school to be disinfected, the Headmaster, Mr Kenneth Dotse Agbomafzi, was highly impressed with the exercise by Zoomlion, commending the company and government for the initiative.
He allayed fears of parents and assured them of the safety of their children. He went on to explain that this was because all safety precautions had been taken by the school to protect the retuning Form Two students. He was full of praise for the staff members of the school.
He used the opportunity to throw light on a challenge faced by his school.
According to him, the school has no fence wall which situation was making it difficult to supervise and control many of the students.
He indicated that because there was no fence wall, many of them were always tempted to run to town.
Consequently, Mr Agbomafzi appealed to the central government to help his school with a fence wall to prevent students from running to town.
The Regional Vector Control Manager of Zoomlion for both Western and Western North Regions, Mr Samuel Adu, explained that the exercise was to repose confidence and to assure the Form Two students, teaching and non-teaching staff members that their schools were safe for academic work.