{"id":135739,"date":"2015-07-18T14:19:03","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T14:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=135739"},"modified":"2015-07-18T16:05:06","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T16:05:06","slug":"second-lady-apologises-for-blasting-chalk-headmistress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=135739","title":{"rendered":"Second lady apologises for blasting &#8216;chalk&#8217; headmistress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The wife of the Vice President, Mrs. Matilda Amissah-Arthur, \u00a0has apologised for\u00a0berating the headmistress of a school in Kukurantumi \u00a0for requesting government&#8217;s assistance to acquire chalk.<\/p>\n<p>According to the second lady, who was speaking at the 40th Anniversary of the Jack and Jill school in Accra, her response to the headmistress was without\u00a0malice and she only\u00a0sought\u00a0to encourage the members of the community to play an active role in the school.<\/p>\n<p>[contextly_sidebar id=&#8221;nUuId4KdvBi0GP8ASC9eXwD9DejLom3o&#8221;]&#8221;The comments I made have been in the media since I made them. When the headmistress asked for chalk, my response was intended to encourage community participation in the school. If I have offended anybody, I take this opportunity to say I am very sorry,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>The Second Lady however charged the media to give her apology equal publicity as they did with her Kukurantumi comments.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Media I hope you will carry it. You were in \u201cKukurantumi\u201d and you did all that so media carry it&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Mrs Amissah-Arthur had responded to the request from the headmistress of Kukurantumi Presby Primary School, Juliet Oppong by saying:\u00a0\u201cI think we have over pampered you people. Because we have provided free school uniforms so parents don\u2019t even want to buy basic things for their children&#8230;I will not give you chalk today, neither will I give it to you tomorrow. You have teachers; you have the PTA, go and buy chalk for the school.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Her comments were\u00a0greeted with widespread criticism from several stakeholders in the educational sector and the largest opposition in the country the New Patriotic Party (NPP).<\/p>\n<p>A statement signed by the NPP&#8217;s Women Organiser \u00a0described the comments as &#8216;insensitive&#8217; and &#8216;unacceptable&#8217; while the\u00a0Eastern Regional Youth Organiser of the party described it as &#8216;gross disrespect&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0National Council of PTAs called on the second lady to apologise for her comments and it appears the second lady has caved in to the pressure.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>By: Edwin Kakofi\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<br \/>\n<a class=\"twitter-follow-button\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EdKwakofi\" data-show-count=\"false\">Follow @EdKwakofi<\/a><br \/>\n<script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\n!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=\/^http:\/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+':\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The wife of the Vice President, Mrs. Matilda Amissah-Arthur, \u00a0has apologised for\u00a0berating the headmistress of a school in Kukurantumi \u00a0for requesting government&#8217;s assistance to acquire chalk. According to the second lady, who was speaking at the 40th Anniversary of the Jack and Jill school in Accra, her response to the headmistress was without\u00a0malice and she [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":135745,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[43,38,16],"class_list":["post-135739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-shooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/135745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}