Deputy Education Minister Dr. Yaw Adutwum says the Education Ministry will take action against the Youth Organiser of the ruling New Patriotic Party for visiting a senior high school to campaign despite a government directive.
Henry Nana Boakye, popularly known as ‘Nana B’, is seen an in image gone viral on social media addressing some senior high school students in a classroom despite a government directive that no outsider including parents should be allowed to visit students. The measure was instituted by government as part of efforts to avoid the spread of COVID-19 in the country.
Speaking to GhOne TV Monday, Dr. Adutwum said the conduct of his fellow party member offends the protocol and must not be tolerated.
“If he went to classrooms is unacceptable, it’s totally unacceptable. It really doesn’t matter to me who you are; protocol is protocol, rules are rules. You don’t do that! I’m a Deputy Minister, we’ll carry it up and I think the rules are clear. And any local jurisdiction where anybody does that the local authorities have control so the rules are very clear and I don’t think it’s acceptable for us to do what clearly the law says we should not do.
“This is not a political issue for me, to me it’s an education issue, it’s a COVID-19 issue and I’ll bring it to the attention of Ghana Education Service, they’re the ones who run the schools,” he said.
Meanwhile, the National Democratic Congress’ COVID-19 technical team has called on the government to immediately shut down schools to prevent more students from contracting the coronavirus disease.
In a statement, the COVID-19 technical team stated that cases were spreading among students in various schools across the country and called on the government to value the lives of the students by reversing the decision to reopen schools.
“The lives of Ghanaian students, teachers and non-teaching staff should be valued equally, and Government must take immediate steps to reverse its decision and to begin the process of returning students to their homes.
“This will necessarily include mass testing of students to ascertain their COVID-19 status before they are released to their parents, to minimize the risk of exporting cases from campuses to communities.”