The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is threatening to disconnect power from the Ashanti School for the Deaf for owing an accumulated electricity bill of GH₵ 80, 127.96.
The school authorities say they are financially handicapped and are therefore incapable of settling such a whopping amount.
The Headmaster of the school, Ofosu Boachie, who expressed worry over the disconnection threat said when it is carried out, the pupils will be unable to communicate or study at night.
[contextly_sidebar id=”aMl9cPZwOgSWGsea4oKsDp28fvZEsa6U”]The school’s only source of income is government feeding grants of GH₵ 2.20p per pupil per day, which has, in recent times, been increased to GH₵3.3 but is yet to be effected.
“It is the feeding grant we rely on. It does not come regularly, that is what we manage to do maintenance, buy fuel and fire wood etc. We can’t even pay our creditors…they are always on us and we have to lie to them all the time,” Mr Boachie said.
He said though the school has a standby generator donated to it by Sokpo, a non-governmental organization from the Netherlands, the authorities could not afford to pay the GH₵ 75 worth of fuel required to run it.
The cooks use fire wood, though the school has a Liquefied Petroleum Gas tank which has been empty for nearly a year due to lack of funds.
The 595 disability students are living in bed-bugs-infested dormitories for two years and the authorities say they are financially weak to fight the pest-ridden creatures, because the charge for the fumigation process is GH₵ 1,200.
“We face serious challenges with the frequent light off, and some of the children ease themselves indiscriminately around the dormitories and the bathrooms at night because they cannot communicate to their colleagues to accompany them for nature’s call,” a teacher said on condition of anonymity.
“The situation becomes more serious when a child is sick at night, because how will he or she going to communicate or who can see the sign of he or she to find out what is wrong?”
Nearly 45 pupils are crammed into one classroom designed for 15 pupils due to acute deficiency in classrooms.
A teacher said the classrooms are not carpeted and the walls are not acoustically treated to repel noise as required in any normal school of the deaf and so interferes with teaching and learning.
“Their living conditions are horrible, the dormitories and the classrooms are overcrowded. We have to put chop boxes in the classrooms,” another teacher said.
Dozens of the children sleep on uncovered mattresses placed on the bare ground as there are no wooden slabs fixed on the three-in-one iron beds.
These compel the children to squeeze themselves into the limited space.
A room designed for 10 three-in-one beds, contains about 20 beds.
Government infrastructural support has ceased for years leaving the school largely dependent on individuals’ support and benevolence of non-governmental organizations.
According to the officials, although the school had 15 of the government free school uniforms distributed last year, they lack chalks, registers and vocational items.
The school’s administrative block, a six-classroom block and fence wall, are the only government assisted structures.
The rest of the institution’s structures including dining hall were put up, notably, by Sokpo, Japanese and German governments, local residents living in Canada and with intermittent support from the Otumfuo Education Fund.
The authorities say but for lack of infrastructure, the school could have admitted more than 40 children on the waiting list.
Parents’ frustration for not getting admission coupled with social stigmatization and inability of using sign language to communicate with their children account for, dozens of children with disabilities feared locked up at homes, the school bosses noted.
The school which started with 24 pupils in 1977 now has 337 boys and 258 girls, who are largely deaf or dumb and deaf, some intellectually challenged, blind and deaf-blind.
Nearly half of these children have lost both of their parents or belong to a single parent, said a senior tutor who pleaded anonymity.
Source: GNA