Classrooms should not be used for church services – Chuchuliga Chief

Nab Francis Akanbegme Asangalisa II, the Paramount Chief of the Chuchuliga Traditional Area in the Builsa North Municipality of the Upper East Region, says no church should hold service in classrooms of public schools within the Traditional Area.

He said there were several educational infrastructure challenges, including the lack of furniture, dilapidated school buildings among other basic Teaching and Learning Materials (TLMs) which militated against quality education in Chuchuliga and its environs.

He said even though Non-Governmental Organizations, especially the Participatory Action for Rural Development Alternatives (PARDA) and Children Believe (CB) had over the years constructed schools and provided furniture to schools in the area, activities of some churches partly accounted for some of the challenges in them.

The Paramount Chief said this in a side-line interview with the Ghana News Agency at a ceremony to handover 214 pieces of dual desks to basic schools in the Builsa North Municipality and the Kassena-Nankana West District by PARDA with funding from CB.

“We will soon meet and discuss with Head teachers and management of the Ghana Education Service in the Municipality to ensure that no church uses any public school classroom for service.

“We have realised that the churches also contribute to the several broken pieces of furniture across schools in this community. The Traditional Council will soon serve notice to churches not to hold services in classrooms of any public school in this Area,” Nab Asangalisa II said.

He emphasised that even though some of the broken pieces of furniture were caused by the carelessness of pupils as some teachers looked unconcerned, church activities also accounted for the situation.

He said the Traditional Council would ensure strict compliance with the yet-to-be issued directive to ensure school property were maintained to serve their purpose.

Dr Michael Wombeogo, the Executive Director of PARDA, expressed worry about the several broken pieces of furniture in basic schools in the community even though PARDA on yearly basis supplied furniture to them.

He said some of the broken furniture needed just nails to put them back to use, and said it was the responsibility of managements of the various basic schools to fix them.

“PARDA and CB or government cannot do everything for you, some of these broken pieces of furniture need only some nails to fix them, but instead, teachers pack them aside and still complain of lack of furniture.

“We spend thousands of Cedis to provide furniture and if GES and school management cannot maintain them, we will not be motivated to provide more,” the Executive Director said.

He called on stakeholders, especially management of schools to take steps to ensure that broken pieces of furniture in various schools were fixed, so that NGOs could channel sources into different areas of need to improve quality education in schools.

Dr Wombeogo described as an eye sore, a heap of broken pieces of furniture packed in one dilapidated block of the Chuchuliga Old Primary School while stakeholders looked unconcerned, and called on the Municipal Assembly and GES to take immediate steps to fix them.