From James Appaikorang Jnr., Kumasi
Teachers pursuing the Untrained Teacher Diploma in Basic Education (UTDBE) at the St. Louis Training College in the Ashanti Regional capital, Kumasi, have threatened to demonstrate against their authorities for what they described as bouts of maltreatment being meted out to them.
The teachers, who are writing their fourth year second semester exams at the St. Louis Senior High School, told TODAY in an exclusive interview that the harsh conditions they were facing at the school was making it difficult for them to even revise their notes.
They complained that even though they had paid a boarding and lodging fee of GH¢ 61.60, most of them had no decent place to lay their heads. Some of them disclosed that they had either been sleeping in their cars, on the verandah in front of the dormitory, or under the trees on the compound.
They said about 300 of them had been forced into a hall which should have accommodated just 180 students; a situation they said could easily transfer diseases from one person to the other.
“A certain man coughed throughout the night, and I was not able to sleep for fear of contracting a whooping cough, so I had to go and join the verandah boys”, one of them lamented.
To compound their plights, according to them, was the presence of bed bugs in the halls which made their stay there very uncomfortable. They said they (the students) had to spray the rooms themselves last semester when they came to stay on the compound and felt they were being cheated by the school authorities.
TODAY gathered that there had been a financial disagreement between the authorities of the St. Louis Training College where the teachers went for tuition, and the St. Louis Senior High School where they are currently writing their exams.
The disagreement, our findings established was due to a deduction of 90.00 pesewas by the authorities of the Training College from their GH¢ 22 cedis paid as feeding fees even though they were being fed by the authorities of the St. Louis Senior High School.
They noted that the authorities of the Senior High School therefore felt cheated and hence were visiting their wrath on the poor teachers who had paid all that they needed to pay. The added that even classrooms where they could sit to revise their notes have been locked compelling them to study under trees.
Attempts by the paper to get the views of the headmistress of St. Louis Senior High School proved abortive as she had not arrived on the school compound as at press time.
The UTDBE was introduced by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government in 2005 to give pupil teachers who were interested in acquiring Diploma in Education the chance to realize their dreams.