Primary school pupils in the Western Rural district
By Mustapha Kamara Jnr
Minister of Information and Communications says government needs international assistance to reopen schools after they were closed down about eight months ago.
“We need the international community to come again” to assist the country in its post-Ebola preparation, said Alpha Kanu at the weekly government press briefing in Freetown on Thursday. He said government needed $139,000,000 to disinfect and rehabilitate schools, build toilets, provide good facilities for water and sanitation and provide thermometers and other facilities for schools across the country before pupils could start attending.
He also said government would set up small holding centres around schools in case there was any suspected Ebola case.
The government spokesman said they had already raised some of the money needed. “But we are short of $85, 000, 000,” he said.
Schools were supposed to have reopened in September, last year, but they have remained closed after President Ernest Bai Koroma declared a public health emergency in July to contain the spread of the Ebola virus which experts say is transmitted via body contact.
There have been massive supports from both national and international organisations to help curb the disease that has killed so far more than 3000 people, according to government figures.
Meanwhile, recently Audit Service Sierra Leone, which is mandated by Sierra Leone’s Constitution to audit all public institutions funded by government, published a report that revealed that more than Le14 billion of monies given to combat the epidemic had been withdrawn “from the Emergency Health Response and Miscellaneous Accounts without any supporting documents to substantiate the utilisation of such funds.”
The report has since sparked off widespread public debate. Alpha Kanu has been reported to have condemned reporting on the issue on the international media, arguing that it would discourage international donors from continuing their effort towards the anti-Ebola effort.
Happy and concerns
Recently, government announced that since it was now recording a drastic reduction in the number of Ebola cases in the country, it would reopen schools on March 30.
Kanu said that they wanted to ensure that students were safe from contracting Ebola before they were allowed to resume attending.
“Of the eight thousand, one hundred and fifty schools we have in Sierra Leone, two thousand, seven hundred and twenty six don’t have toilets,” the minister revealed at the press briefing, adding that they had to ensure all schools had toilets before they would be reopened. He also said government would provide school materials and pay fees for all candidates of public examinations in the current academic year.
He said revision classes for candidates for the Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE), which have been rescheduled for March 23, would commence two weeks before the date. He added that the examinations would last for a week and the Conference of Principals would do assessments.
Chairman of the Conference of Principals Sylvester Meheux told Politico that they were working closely with government to ensure that schools were safe before they would be reopened.
“We are very happy now that schools are about to reopen because it has been very disastrous for school pupils,” Meheux said.
He said the long break in learning had had negative impacts on students as many of the girls were now pregnant and some of them had become street traders.
Early this month, a community health centre at Kroo Bay reported that there had been a sharp increase in the number of teenage pregnancies in the community since the outbreak of Ebola. A nurse spoke of 15 teen pregnancies in a month.
Sylvester Meheux said the 2014/15 academic year which has not yet begun would be compressed with 25 weeks and no break. “There would be several continuous assessments and only one examination, which would be the final examination to end the academic year,” he said.
He added that as principals they were working with the heads of private schools to run the academic year in accordance with the national programme that had been set for government schools.
Meheux, who doubles as the principal of the Government Rokel Junior Secondary School, also said that government had promised to provide private schools with facilities such as thermometers to test body temperatures of pupils.
He however said they were not aware of what the fees of private schools would be for the academic year, an issue that is becoming increasingly controversial following reports that some private schools have suggested asking for pay full fees for the whole academic year, even though schools will run for one term as per the current arrangement.
Some parents have vowed that they would not pay for terms their children have not attended school. Others are even unsure of letting their kids go to school without the country being declared Ebola-free.
Alfina Davis, a parent in Freetown with two children, told Politico that she feared her kids would not be safe amidst reports of still new cases of the diseas.
But Mr Meheux of the Conference of Principal had assured of student’s safety, while calling on parents to be optimistic about the future.
© Politico 24/02/15
