By Philip Tengzu
Loho, (UW/R), Aug. 10, GNA – Madam Veronica Dong, the Headmistress of the St. Don Bosco Special School, has appealed for logistical and infrastructure support to alleviate the plight of the school.
She said the school, located at Loho in the Nadowli-Kaleo District of the Upper West Region, did not have any means of transport to respond to emergency situations, which compelled the authorities to rely on motorbikes and tricycles to transport children to health facilities when the need arose.
Madam Dong, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Loho, recounted an instance where a child died due to delays in getting transport to send her to the hospital.
“The school has no means of transport of any kind so when we have cases like illness, teachers pick the patient on a motorbike to the nearest health facility,” she said.
“If the case is severe then we have to rely on the services of tricycles to transport the person to the nearest health facility for healthcare.”
Madam Dong said they had to resort to the use of a tricycle (Motorking) to transport foodstuff from the market to the school, a situation she described as worrying.
She called for in-service training for the teachers to equip them with the basic skills to handle children with special needs as only three out of the 10 teachers had special skills training.
The children at the Don Bosco Special School were trained in daily living skills, self-help skills, functional academics, social, life, and vocational skills, hence building the capacity of teachers would help in such training.
Regarding infrastructure, the Headmistress said the school was bedeviled with inadequate infrastructure including classrooms, dormitories, accommodation for the staff, and a kitchen.
The lack of accommodation had resulted in only two of the four house mothers to stay on campus at a time to care for the about 80 children with special needs at night, making it difficult to effectively care for them.
She appealed for a kitchen befitting the school as food was prepared in a temporal structure that got flooded anytime it rained.
GNA