assistance

Tolon (NR), Oct. 12, GNA - The Tolon/Kumbungu District Assembly has appealed to the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) to assist in rehabilitating educational structures that were destroyed during this tear's rainstorm to get children back to the classrooms. Mr. Suhiyini Wumbei, the District Chief Executive, who made the appeal at the weekend in an interview with the GNA at Tolon said the rainstorm destroyed 18 schools in the district and disrupted academic work.

He said the entire roof of the six-classroom block of the District Assembly (DA) Primary school at Tali was ripped off and destroying all the educational materials with the exception of only the classroom furniture while the remaining schools had their roofs partially ripped off.

Mr. Wumbei said the total cost to renovate the schools had been estimated at GH¢400,000 and the estimate had already been forwarded to the GETFund administration in Accra for the necessary assistance. He said academic performance in the district was already appalling and the situation would worsen if adequate measures were not put in place to ensure that children went back to school to study under a conducive atmosphere. He said the District Assembly Common Fund for 2008 had already been spent and that there was nothing the assembly could do to renovate the schools unless with the intervention of the GETFund, NGOs and corporate bodies. When the GNA visited Tali on Friday, school children of the Tali DA primary were attending classes under trees and had to be dragging their tables and chairs according to the direction of the trees' shadows. The headmaster also used one of the trees for administrative work while some of the pupils had either joined others or stopped schooling, a situation that would continue to draw education back if nothing was done about. Two separate rainstorms hit the Tolon/Kumbungu District in May this year and destroyed several public and private properties including 18 public school buildings and rendered many people homeless. 12 Oct. 08