Save The Weija Kids

 

This is outrageous and unacceptable. The picture of six-year-old Praise Dapaah, a class-one pupil of the Weija HIPS Charity School, scaling a locked exit door on the Weija Dam as captured on the front page of the Daily Graphic, yesterday broke the hearts of many Ghanaians.

Viewing the small girl attempting to scale the wall against the backdrop of a water body made an eerie spectacle as captured by the cameraman. We are scared at what could have happened to the kid as she dared the odds.

If there is a societal or better governmental irresponsibility, this is it. We should all be ashamed over government's inability to use our God-given resources to provide the necessary infrastructure for the education of our kids.

It would seem that the provision of infrastructure, when it happens at all, is done for the cameras not because it is a responsibility of the government to do so. This accounts for the almost cacophonous claim about a so-called removal of schools under trees which the late President Mills took to the floor of the UN.

Many could not believe whether the Weija kid story is happening in modern day Ghana and in the capital city of the country. It is happening at a time politicians are disturbing our ears about a certain Utopian 'Better Ghana' slogan.

We are pained that the little girl and many others put their lives in peril daily because some government officials have shirked their responsibilities and nobody cares.

The developments in the cluster of schools as reported in the Daily Graphic at Weija demand an immediate intervention by the President, not the Education Minister. In other dispensations, the Education Minister would have resigned out of deference for the kids whose lives have been imperiled for so long and nobody did a thing about it.

Learning that it is an everyday occurrence worsens the matter and we want to learn whether the school authorities have made any complaints to the Ghana Education Service (GES). If they have, we are demanding that whoever failed to act on the matter should tell the good people of this country why they have not.

If on the other hand they did not call the attention of the authorities, they must be queried for endangering the lives of the kids for this long.

Should a calamity befall the cluster of schools, government officials would rush to the scene to promise immediate intervention.

Let the kids be stopped from using the killer means of getting to school with immediate effect and the bridge restored and made ready for use within the shortest possible time. Shame unto the authorities!