Twenty-one out of 374 tablets given by the government for distribution to current form one students of Esiama Senior High School (SHS), in the Ellembelle District of the Western Region cannot be traced, a Daily Guide investigation has revealed.
According to information gathered, management of the school has made several efforts to find the missing tablets, but to no avail.
Sources at the school have asserted that the suspect or suspects might be within the school, indicating that it was not the first time such theft cases were being recorded.
They alleged that recently, an HP laptop computer belonging to the school and some boys’ school uniforms got missing under some bizarre circumstances.
The students’ tablets with the inscription “SM1 Tablet”, were brought from the Regional Resource Center in Sekondi to the School on January 15, 2025.
A source told Daily Guide that the school was invited to collect 374 tablets and so the school’s driver, Peter Acquah, and the storekeeper, Felix Dom, were assigned to use the school bus for the collection.
However, only the school driver returned with the tablets late in the night as the storekeeper had to attend to another assignment.
“So, the tablets were left in the bus under the safekeeping of the security person on duty, one Abdul-Hamid Said”, the source noted.
It was gathered that other schools, including UBASH, a school at Kangbuinli, Nkroful Agricultural SHS and Bonsu Kaku SHS, all in the district, also had their consignments transported together.
Daily Guide learnt that on the following day, the storekeeper of Esiama SHS was still unavailable for the final counting and offloading of the tablets.
“The counting of the tablets was therefore conducted by the school driver, the Senior Housemaster and the Assistant Head, Academics. The rest were the School Clerk and the Assistant Headmistress (Domestic), using the waybill and invoice as references,” the source said.
The source added that the tablets were later packed into the school’s storeroom and secured with three padlocks.
The keys were handed over to the Senior Housemaster for safekeeping until the day of distribution.
It was alleged that the Senior Housemaster later handed over the keys to the storekeeper, Felix Dom.
On August 6, 2025 the school decided to distribute the tablets to the students. After 335 tablets has been given out, the store keeper reported that four boxes and one additional tablet, totaling 21 pieces could not be traced.
Headmistress
When Daily Guide contacted the Headmistress of the school, Madam Francisca Biney for her comments on the purported theft case, she said the case has officially been reported to the police and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to investigate.
“The issue is with the police, they are handling it. I reported the case to the police and GES myself so you don’t worry, thank you”, she said
The Storekeeper
The storekeeper keeper, Felix Dom on his part, denied being present at the school when the Headmistress was assigning the driver to go to Sekondi for the tablets.
He also mentioned that the tablets were initially kept in a room near the Headmistress’ office.
“The only time I went to where the tablets were kept was when the school was instructed to take pictures of how the tablets were being kept and send to GES in Accra, that I did for the school’s IT person,” he said.
From Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi