By Anthony Adongo Apubeo
Navrongo (U/E), Nov 04, GNA – Two second cycle schools in the Upper East Region have received solar powered mechanised water systems from the Centre for Water, Sanitation and hygiene (C-WASH), a WASH focused non-governmental organisation.
The gesture is under the WASH in Senior High Schools (WinSHS) and is being implemented with funding from the Ernst Peyer Foundation of Switzerland.
The beneficiary schools are the Saint John’s Integrated Senior High School in the Kassena-Nankana Municipality and the Azeem Namoa Senior High Technical School in the Bongo District.
The water facilities which comprised of 3,000 litres of water storage tanks and chlorine dozers each were part of efforts to address acute water crisis in the schools and improve quality academic performance.
The facilities would serve a total 1,559 students and 138 staff in the St John’s Integrated Senior High School and 766 students and 46 staff in the Azeem Namoa Senior High Technical School with safe drinking water and water for other purposes.
The gesture would also serve as a model for adoption and contribute to ending open defecation as an earlier baseline survey by C-WASB revealed that the students and staff from both schools practiced open defecation due to lack of water and sanitation facilities.
The water systems are connected to the various dormitories, classrooms, offices, staff accommodation, dining halls among other places of convenient for the students and staff to have easy access to water.
Speaking at the various schools to inaugurate and hand over the facilities to the schools, Mr Samuel Vorlashie, the Project Manager, C-WASH, said the intervention was to help address the acute water shortage the two schools were facing, improve sanitation practices and improve academic exercise.
He indicated that the pilot project was also a response to WASH assessments in organisations and senior high schools five years ago by Ernst Peyer Foundation which found out that there was a distressing gap in WASH in senior high schools.
The assessment revealed that although the sector was critical for improved academic and healthy living in schools, it had not been given the necessary attention in the senior high schools by governments and other relevant organisations.
“We want to end open defecation because the schools have toilet facilities, but they were not using them and we also want to ensure hand hygiene practice with the handwashing facilities we have given them which would be mounted in the schools in order to reduce diseases”, he added.
Going forward, the Project Manager noted that apart from building the capacity of the students on WASH related issues and menstrual hygiene, the project would also support the schools with toilet facilities and urged management to ensure sustainability plan to protect the facility.
Mr Alex Tsey, the Country Representative for Ernst Peyer Foundation, urged management and students of the schools to take care of the facilities to ensure it lasted, to achieve maximum benefits.
Mr Steve Akuba, the Headteacher, St John’s Integrated Senior High School, lauded the efforts of C-WASH and Ernst Peyer Foundation for contributing to address the water challenge of the school which had over the years adversely affected contact hours and academic activities.
The students of both schools indicated that the water systems had brought huge relief to them as they used to travel long distances to access water, leading to conflicts among students, community members and sexual harassment of student girls who moved to the community to search for water.
GNA