Pupils of Pakro Roman Catholic Primary and Junior High School near Nsawam in the Akuapim South District of the Eastern Region before vacating on Friday embarked on a demonstration against incessant defecation in their classrooms by unscrupulous persons in the Community.
The pupils backed by their teachers marched through the streets of Pakro Community holding placards with inscriptions such as “stop defecating in our classrooms; we are tired of cleaning faeces “.
According to the schoolchildren, they are forced to scrub human faeces every day and clean used condoms as the perpetrators also have sex in the classrooms, a situation they say affect teaching and learning for teaching hours are used to sanitize the affected classrooms.
“We don’t have windows and doors. The classrooms are not cemented so everyday people defecate in the classroom. We have to clean faeces before class starts,” one of the pupils told Starr News.
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The menace is reported to have existed for over two decades and has been a major worry to teachers in the school, forcing many to seek transfers after spending a few years in the school.
The perpetrators smear tables, chairs and office of the teachers with human faeces.
“This bad behaviour started long ago. Since I came to this community to teach every three days we record open defecation incident in the classrooms. Just this term, class one recorded four cases, class two recorded three cases, class three one case of open defecation, class four and five both recorded two cases, class six recorded one incident, then the JHS is also not spared, a concerned teacher lamented in a Starr News interview.
He added, “The sad thing is that after defecating they smear the blackboards, teachers’ tables and chairs with their faeces. They break into the office, defecate into bowls teachers use to eat and lock it in the cardboard. We have made several complaints to the chiefs and opinion leaders but no avail. Just recently, while we served notice for this protest they came to defecate again.”
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According to the teachers, the school needs a facelift with fixed doors and windows to ward off the perpetrators.
Starr News gathered that the Pakro Community has three public toilet facilities in addition to a toilet facility in the affected school, which is sometimes opened to the public to use, but the perpetrators bypass these facilities to defecate in the classrooms.
Previously, two other schools in the community were also recording similar incidents but after getting new and secured classroom infrastructure, the menace stopped.
Pakro and its surrounding communities are notorious for classroom defecation. In one of the nearby communities, Obosono, the Chief was compelled to invoke a curse on anyone who defecates in a classroom scaring away the perpetrators after several efforts to stop the practice failed.
