An Association of Churches that worship in public schools has appealed to the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to reconsider its decision to eject them in the next six-month.
[contextly_sidebar id=”lYbGHPzV7RhcqbUw76CXAFwXHWnECslf”]President of the Association which is made up of about 316 churches in Accra, Alfred Alotei-Noah told Citi News, banning churches from holding services in schools is too harsh, especially, when the Association was in touch with the Assembly on related matters.
The AMA has given the churches up to July 2015 to stop holding their services in basic schools within the Metropolis.
The Assembly’s decision followed reports of that the activities of the churches destroy the furniture in the classrooms and also put pressure on other facilities in the classrooms.
But the Association wants the Assembly to hold individual churches responsible for such destructions instead of imposing a “blanket ban.”
According to Alotei-Noah, the various churches signed “a tenancy agreement” with the Assembly, through the Ghana Education Service and so must be held individually liable.
“…one of the provisions [of the agreement] is that if a church destroys anything related to the school, that church is responsible for replacing or paying for it,” Allotei-Noah said.
He added that “every church has a name and every church worships in a particular school. We are an association of churches, and so if a particular church is found to have destroyed anything, we should have an arrangement that will make the person to hold that single church. Bunching us all up in my humble opinion is not the best way to go”.
Even though Alotei-Noah admitted that the churches’ activities over time caused some damage to the school facilities, he said an agreement was reached with the AMA authorities to repair the damages.
“Though we are not supposed to use the school’s furniture, we provide our own chairs but when you take them out every time, we can be sure that something will go wrong. But the provisions of the tenancy agreement states that when you destroy, you pay for it”.
He however said the AMA was yet to officially announce its ultimatum to the Association.
By: Eugenia Tenkorang/citifmonline.com/Ghana