Some women steal school furniture for firewood

The Northern Regional Directorate of Ghana Education Service (GES) has said it has observed that some women in the Sagnarigu municipality stealing the wooden furniture of basic schools in the area for firewood.

According to the GES Regional Statistics Officer, Mr. Alhassan Seibu, some women in the community sneak into Education Ridge basic school to break the wooden furniture in the classrooms for firewood.

He also added that scrap dealers also steal metal furniture and sell them as scraps.

“There is a current trending issue, some Sagnarigu women come to the classrooms, break the wooden furniture, and go to set fire to them because our rooms are not secured”.

“If you talk about the scrap dealers – the metal furniture – they also break in and carry them to go and sell as scraps, this is the current trend that is developing in the area where I am staying, and I know it is the same in other districts.

“In Savelugu, an NGO went and donated over 500 desks and after six months when we went back everything was gone,” he lamented.

Mr. Alhassan Seibu made these revelations during a presentation on the furniture situation across the Northern region and the performance of WAEC and WASSCE students last week. It was the group’s 2023 maiden meeting with the Northern Regional Coordinating Council in Tamale.

Mr Seibu added that there are about 157,000 kindergarten children but only 52,000 of them have desks to sit on, representing 33.6 percent, with a huge deficit of 104,000 children lying on their bellies.

At the primary school level, out of 340,000 children, only 149,000 are able to get a place to sit, representing 44 percent, and the remaining children lie on their stomachs to study.