Paga: 11 Pupils Wounded As School Walls Collapse On Them

At least 11 pupils of the Paga E/A primary school in the Kassena-Nankana West District in the Upper East Region have been left injured after the walls of two classrooms collapsed on them.

A heavy rainstorm on Monday (21 March) swept through the town and ripped off the roofs of buildings and schools in the town.

The school officials said the wounded pupils have been rushed to the Paga District Hospital for medical attention, adding no lives were lost.

Headmaster of the school, Addiyire Peter Ajegiwe, in an interview with an Accra-based Asaase Radio said, ” this afternoon, a rainstorm hit Paga causing a lot of havoc and 11 of our pupils got wounded as a result of the rainstorm. When the rain was coming, they [pupils] were all in their various classrooms so the basic three classroom was unfortunate the walls collapsed and fell on some of the pupils. Some of them got seriously wounded and we had to take them to the Paga hospital for treatment.”

“The situation is alarming and we don’t know what to do. It’s only God’s intervention that these children are safe.”

Addiyire said the failure on the part of local authorities to renovate the dilapidated school building despite knowing its condition is to blame for the disaster.

He said the school management had written severally to the district assembly since 2017 informing it of the worsening condition of the school building but all efforts did not yield any positive results.

Addiyire pointed out that the disaster is an indication of how the local authority was failing in its duties, stressing the disaster could have been prevented if authorities had taken earlier steps to address it.

“It’s sad. When I took over this school in 2014, I wrote letter upon letters to the district assembly making several appeals for them to come and renovate this school because it is just at a collapsing stage. But there was no response.”

Addiyire said academic activities in the school will be affected if authorities are not quick in their response to address the challenge brought by the disaster.

He was particularly worried about how the school will operate during the rainy season.

Meanwhile, the rainstorm also damaged the roof of the school’s Junior High School building. The roof of the form one classroom has been ripped off.

The Paga central mosque also had its roof completely peeled off by the storm.

Several stores in the Paga market have also been damaged by the Monday afternoon storm.

Source: Asaase Radio.