Rampant Boat Disasters: GNAT wants teachers in Island Communities equipped with Swimming Skills

The Ghana National Association of Teachers, GNAT is advocating for a mandatory swimming tutorials for teachers posted to island communities.

The association believes that will be an effective intervention for teachers to save their lives in the events of boat disasters and sustain the human resource base of the teachers front.

The leadership of Ghana’s largest teacher union made the recommendation a ceremony to present some life jackets to its members at kudorkope in the krachie east district of the oti region.

It could be recalled that the first half of the year 2023 has recorded five separate incidents of boat disasters killing in excess of twenty people including teachers and pupils.

Faana in the ga south municipality, kete krachi and atigagorme in the sene east district are few of the islands that have recorded tragic boat incidents this year.

In the island communities, the use of canoes is the only means by which commuting is made.

However, factors including excessive overloading of passenger canoes, non availability of life saving jackets, natural cause and other forms of human induced errors continue to pose threats to marine commuters on islands.

The situation appears to be more dire in the krachi east and west districts of the oti region, as teachers and pupils risk commuting on the oti river to attend school each day on another island amidst bad climatic conditions.

Narrating his ordeal, a teacher at kudorkope, addo prosper explained how he survived a horrific canoe disaster earlier this year in a quest to access money from his bank at dambai, the oti regional capital.

He further indicated that the islands are such that if you don’t go to town early and return, by 12 noon all canoes providing shuttle services would have closed and you will be compelled to spend extra day or days in Dambai.

‘So on a fateful Sunday dawn, I joined a colleague and two others on a canoe to dambai. In the middle of the journey, we encounted wind which splashed water into our canoe from behind’, he recounted.

He added that ‘when I tried to scoop the water, the canoe was struck by another wind. This time at a severer magnitude and the next thing I saw was that we were all swimming in the river.’

With terrifying flashbacks, he painfully narrated that he was eventually saved when the other three members aboard realised that he didn’t know how to swim and was fast drowing.

However, other teachers have been unfortunate in similar disasters.

A newly posted teacher from the eastern region to ketekrachi was among people who died in the oti river after an overloaded canoe they were aboard sunk after an encounter with wind.

The teacher has since been buried.

The Krachi west district alone has forty six island settlements but only twenty-one have school in which trained teachers have been posted.

Children from the other twenty-five island communities eager to change their world through education take their destiny into their hands and embark on daily voyage to access education on other islands without protective clothing.

A form three student at the kudorkope DA junior high schoool, Grace Akwetey said they feel scared and insecure anytime they commute on the oti river to school.

She appealed for state’s intervention to provide them with life saving jackets.

The Ghana National Association of teachers, GNAT has initiated steps to prevent death of their members resulting from boat disasters.

The association as part of its welfare package has been supporting its members on the islands with life jackets.

Kudorkope in the krachie east district hosted the brief event to present some two hundred and fifty one life jackets to gnat member in eighteen schools.

The gesture will also be replicated onp other islands in other regions.

Addressing the gathering, president of Gnat, Rev Isaac Owusu accused the Ghana education service of reneging on its responsibility to fulfill requirements of the collective bargaining agreement they signed threatening that the union will consider an industrial action to push a course if the safety of teachers on islands are not prioritized.

Reverend Isaac Owusu meanwhile proposed to the Ghaba education service that teachers who have no experience in swimming must not be posted to any island community without any form of training.

He urged the GES to procure the services of the navy to offer extensive swimming tutorials to newly trained teachers whose services are required on the islands.

On his part, general secretary of gnat, thomas musah tanko emphasized the achievement of the sustainable development goal four which promotes equitable provision of quality education for all by 2030 and called for swift interventions to break all barriers to education on island and other hard to reach communities.

He said, ‘children born on the islands deserve better education because it is through no fault of theirs that they are born there’.

“Such children would have wished to be born in America, UK and other developed countries but by divine intervention they are born on Islands in Ghana. They must not be left behind,” he passionately remarked.