19,743 Students Affected By Akosombo Dam Spillage

It has emerged that a total of 19,743 school children in the Eastern, Volta and Greater Ac­cra Regions have been affected by the recent Akosombo and Kpong Dams spillage.

The Executive Director of Child Rights International, CRI, Bright Appiah who revealed this at a presser held in Accra noted that the affected students are from 71 schools comprising Kindergarten, Primary and Junior High.

He explained that more than 9,000 of them could not retrieve their educational materials, including uniforms, bags, books, shoes, and textbooks from the floods.

Mr Appiah who expressed worry over the situation called on the Ghana Education Service to develop and implement an Educa­tion Recovery Plan, adding that it would help expedite the reintegration of affected children into school to enable them to catch-up with teaching and learning activities.

He noted that their reports conducted was to assess the im­pact of the spillage, especially in the education and health of children, adding that per CRI’s estimation, it would take more than three months for the state to officially return the children back to school, hence the need to start addressing the problem faster.

On health, he said 90 per cent of children in safe havens had reported having contracted one ailment or the other, adding that “The top three diseases reported in the havens among children are malaria at 94.3 per cent, skin diseas­es at 70 per cent and headaches at 30 per cent’’.

He noted that “About 20 per cent of children showed signs of dissociation refus­ing to acknowledge the disaster and any impact it may or may not have had on them, this group claims that nothing has changed in their lives and things are just fine’’.

The study also indicated that more than 3,200 adolescent girls affected by spillage had reported the lack of access to personal hygiene products such as sanitary towels forcing them to resort to the use of other unhygienic materials.

Mr Appiah called on all organ­isations and government agencies in charged of the distribution of relief items to ensure that equitable distribution of relief items, particu­larly to children with disabilities or those caring for differently-abled parents were addressed.

-BY Daniel Bampoe