Parents Want Children Back Home, As COVID-19 Ravages Reopened Schools. -EC, Gov’t Complicit

The National Council for Parents Teacher Associations (NCPTAs) want their wards to return back home after increasing numbers of the deadly COVID-19 infections are reported within newly reopened schools.

The angry parents in a letter dated today, July 13, 2020, fired the Akufo Addo administration for reopening these schools without providing enough Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and health personnel to handle potential outbreaks in schools.  

In total, some 35 students out of the over 300,000 students reopened have contracted the disease and it is likely to only get worse.

“Following the above-stated concerns and lapses in the implementation of COVID-19 safety measures, the NCPTAs independent checks have revealed positive cases of COVID-19 infections among our children in the Senior High Schools corroborating same as put out in the public domain by the media” stated Alexander Yaw Danso, the National President of the NCPTAs in the statement.

Since President Akufo Addo controversially forced schools to reopen recently against all caution, some 14 Senior High Schools (SHSs) in the country have recorded positive cases of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

The schools include Mawuli and Mawuko Girls’ SHS in the Ho municipality, the Bishop Herman College in Kpando and Dabala Technical School, all in the Volta region.

The rest are Archbishop Porter Girls, Ahantaman Girls, Diabene and Adiembra SHS, all in the Takoradi municipality as well as Nsein SHS in the Nzema East District and the Suhum Senior High Technical School (STHS) in the Western and Eastern Regions, respectively.

Critics think that despite the threat of the reopening escalating infections among students, the Akufo Addo administration was more politically inclined in its decision to cause the schools to resume than any academic or scientific considerations.

Interestingly, a few days after the reopening, the Electoral Commission mounted an illegal “mobile” voters registration stations in these schools to register the “Akufo Addo Graduates” so they can vote in the December general elections.

The Akufo Addo Graduates are the first beneficiaries of the government’s free education policy. Already, some ruling party officials are relishing the electoral gains for the incumbent government from these first-time voters that were controversially registered on their school premises.

The NCPTAs has also pointed out this disturbing political gamble with the threat of COVID-19 by both the Electoral Commission and the Akufo Addo administration.

“Our fear again has to do with the voters’ registration exercise in the schools which has the tendency to compromise the safety of our children because many more people would be allowed entry into the schools. This is rather worrying as parents are barred from seeing their children for reasons of minimising the spread of the Coronavirus to safeguard the precious lives of these young ones,” the NCPTAs statement read.

“The schools should be closed down (all students must be sent home) immediately to avert further spreading of the Coronavirus among our children and staff,” the Association charged the Akufo Addo administration.

Several countries worldwide and in Africa are down schools again after recent reopening from COVID-19 lockdown saw a renewed spike in infection among students.