Accra, – Mr Ken Ashigbey, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, has appealed to the West African Examination Council (WAEC) to make special arrangements for candidates of this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates in communities hit by tidal waves.
Some school buildings in the Keta and Ketu South Municipalities were destroyed by tidal waves last weekend, disrupting preparations of candidate for the examination scheduled to start on Monday, November 15.
More than 570,000 candidates are expected to sit for this year’s BECE, which will end on Friday, November 19, 2021.
Mr Ashigbey said candidates from the communities hit by the waves would not be in the right state of mind for academic work and urged WAEC to consider setting different questions for them at different time.
“I am not an expert in education and exams management…from a very layman’s point of view, I would think that we should be able to isolate these children in this very precarious situation and say that they might not be able to write the exam at this time, when can we be fair and then be able to set a different kind of questions for them and let them be able to write the exam.
“So, let’s look at their situation and find ways we can make sure that these children would be able to write the exam in the condition that other children in other parts of the country would have to write,” he said.
Mr Ashigbey said situations like that called for “all hands on the wheel” approach to ensure that the sufferings of the affected persons were mitigated if not completely eradicated.
He, therefore, cautioned people who had politicised the situation to put a stop to it because the phenomenon was a “national calamity.”
He said: “This, for us is not the time to play blame game. It is for all of us to rally together, so, the call for government to do more is in the right direction, the call for citizens also to support the effort of government is in the right direction.
“We should all put our shoulders to the wheel to make sure that we are able to make sure that by Sunday evening, the people have at least some mattresses they can lay their heads on.”
Mr Ashigbey said though the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) had sent some relief items to support the victims, more needed to be done to alleviate the plight of the people and called for support from all.
The CEO of the Chamber of Telecommunications encouraged individuals and corporates to donate to the short code *887*889# raise funds to support the victims.
Meanwhile, Mrs Agnes Teye-Cudjoe, Head of Public Affairs, WAEC National Office, said the examination would go on as planned because there had not been any report from the Municipalities on the disaster and its impact on the candidates.
Source: Ghana News Agency