Government’s delegation commensurates with families of nine drowned pupils at Saboba

Saboba(NR) ,- A nine-member Government delegation led by the Deputy Minister of Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, on Monday commensurated with the Chiefs and families of the nine children who got drowned last Friday while returning from their Headmaster’s farm at Saboba.

Other members of the delegation were the Director-General, Ghana Education Service, Prof. Kwasi Opoku Amankwa, the Northern Regional Police Commander, COP Timothy Yoosa Bonga, Regional Director of Education, Dr Peter Attafuah and a team of Clinical Physiologist and counsellors among others.

Courtesy call

The team on Monday morning paid a courtesy call on the Paramount Chief of Saboba, Uchabobor Bawon Mateer Sakojim at his palace.

After meeting the Paramount Chief and the traditional leaders of the area, the team also joined worshipers at the local Catholic Church where a special thanksgiving service was held for the nine departed children.

Rev. Ntim Fordjour and the rest of the delegation later met the bereaved families at the Saboba District Assembly conference hall where each bereaved family was presented with two thousand cedis.

The Deputy Education Minister announced that a team of Clinical psychologists and counsellors had been assigned to the community to help support the teachers, school children and relations of the nine dead students to cope with the situation.

The Director-General of GES, Prof. Kwasi Opoku Amankwa, pledged to collaborate with the traditional leaders to bring sanity and help improve teaching and learning in local schools.

He pledged to ensure that supervision in all schools across the country would be intensified to control any form of abuse to all school children irrespective of where they were located in the country.

The Paramount Chief of Saboba, Uchabobor Bawon Mateer Sakojim lauded the Government for the support to the traditional authorities and the bereaved families.

He expressed the traditional authority’s preparedness to put in place the right measures to bring sanity into schools in the area to curb the issue of headmasters and other teachers sending school children to farm during instructional hours.

The Paramount chief appealed to Government as a matter of urgency to overhaul activities at the Saboba District Education Directorate to improve education in the area.

BRIEFING

Last Friday, around 3 pm, 32 school children who were returning from the farm of the Headmaster of the St. Charles JHS, at Saboba in the Northern Region, got drowned when two of the boats carrying the children capsized.

Out of the 31 children, 22 of them were able to swim across the Oti river while the remaining nine got drowned.

This led to the arrest of the Headmaster, Mr Charles Chinji, who has since been remanded into police custody pending further investigation and prosecution.

The Tamale Circuit court on Monday remanded the Headmaster into police custody for murder. He will reappear before the Court on 29th November 2021.

Source: Ghana News Agency