By Mustapha Sesay
Teachers of Government Rokel Secondary School in central Freetown have issued a 7-day ultimatum to the school authorities demanding certain facilities to be provided or they embark on a sitdown strike.
Speaking to Politico, a senior teacher at the school, Alhaji Abdul Karim Bangura, said he and his colleagues had raised numerous concerns with the school authorities regarding issues that were affecting them as teachers at the school, but that nothing seemed to be forthcoming.
Bangura highlighted the deplorable condition of the staff room, dilapidated structures, poor hygiene, especially with regards toilet facilities for both teachers and pupils as the major problems.
He said it was the school authorities’ role to address some of these problems.
The concerned teacher, also a past pupil of the school, said: “the staff room has nothing that befits a modern staff room. The place is deplorable and empty.”
He also described some makeshift structures in the school compound as “death traps.” He observed that the structures had been put up over forty years ago “and desperately need to be renovated.”
According to Mr. Bangura, Sierra Leone’s appointed Vice President, Victor Bockarie Foh and education authorities who visited the school last week had to cut short their visit because of the school’s deplorable condition. He said Foh was particularly shocked over the poor condition of classrooms in the school and he urged the authorities to do something about it.
The teacher pointed out that the highlighted problems were not new to the school but that they had existed long before the outbreak of the Ebola disease.
Obviously, he stressed, the Ebola situation could not be blamed here, noting that even a school management board was lacking in the school. He also noted that it was the education ministry’s responsibility to set up an impartial board to supervise the management of the school.
Principal for the senior section of the school, Abu Sesay, also attested to the fact that the Government Rokel School lacked almost everything to make it a modern day school. He said some of the school structures had indeed outlived their usefulness.
The principal however debunked Bangura’s claims about the toilets not being in order. He said staff toilets were in good working order.
But he declined to comment on the absence of a school management board. “If you bother to check another time I will talk to you on the issue of a school board,” he said.
He pointed out that everything in the school were not in the right order, but said they were trying to cope with the prevailing circumstances as both sections of the school [JSS and SSS] were using the same facilities and shared the same concerns.
© Politico 21/04/15
