Teachers who use students as farmhands risk losing their licences – DCE

The District Chief Executive for Saboba District, Bingrini George, has said the District Security Committee (DISEC) is set to meet with the Ghana Education Service to discuss the canoe disaster that claimed the lives of nine pupils.

The pupils, all pupils of the St Charles Liwanga R/C Junior High school in the Saboba District of the Northern Region perished in a boat accident when they drowned on their way back from their headteacher’s farm.

The DCE said top among issues to be discussed at the impending DISEC meeting include sanctions for teachers in the district who use their students as farmhands.

Among the sanctions will be the possible seizure of offending teachers’ licences, he said.

in an interview on Adom FM’s morning show, Dwaso Nsem Monday, the DCE said DISEC will also pursue the matter to ensure the headteacher is prosecuted.

Mr Bingrini said seven bodies were removed yesterday from the river while two other bodies were recovered this morning.

The DCE said normally when people drown, in line with the customs and traditions of the people of the area some rituals are performed before the bodies are buried at the riverside.

He added, however, that because the case involving the students is special, the rituals were performed but the corpses were released to the various families for private burials. 

He said even though they have had incidents of students helping their teachers on their farms, they have never encountered this magnitude of students moving to a farm that is so far away, talk less of crossing a river.

Thirty-one students had gone to help their headteacher harvest rice on his farm but on their return journey, the exercise turned bloody when nine of the students drowned, following the capsizing of their boat.

At the moment, the headteacher to whose farm the pupils had gone to work, has been arrested by the Police and is assisting in investigation.