Pope John SHS students boycott 'breakfast without bread'

The students threw away the porridge whiles others walk away from the dinning hall shouting and chanting anti-management slogans.

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Students of Pope John Senior High School in the Eastern regional town of Koforidua, boycotted their breakfast on Monday over what they describe as malnourished food.

Hoping for an improved menu as Ghana celebrated Founder’s Day Monday, the students were heartbroken to discover they had to do with two laddles of  ‘Tom brown’ without bread.

Expressing displeasure and disappointment, the students threw away the porridge whiles others walk away from the dinning hall shouting and chanting anti-management slogans.

The students have been eating breakfast without bread since last term, a student told Multimedia’s Maxwell Kudelor on condition of anonymity.

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Often times, the breakfast is also without milk. The teenagers say it cannot sustain till Lunch at 2pm. But when the cycle of malnourishment continued this term, the students say they had had enough.

It is believed, opinion leaders among the students are preparing to stage a demonstration in the coming weeks.

Management has been tight-lipped over the incident. But some school teachers have revealed that the school is in financial crisis.

According some management members, less than ₵3 paid as feeding fee for each student per day is woefully inadequate. Prisoners in Ghana get ₵1.80 to cater to a day's food.

Some Heads of Senior High Schools have been begging government to release funds to pay for fees it has absorbed because they can no longer bear the constant harassment they face from suppliers.

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“For more than two terms heads of school do not have the peace to deliver their core mandate” President of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) Cecilia Kwakye said at a conference.

“Some [suppliers] have threatened court action,” she complained. She described the situation in the Northern sector as “urgent”.

Cecilia Kwakye said students do not appreciate the funding challenges administrators face and therefore go to violent extremes when their feeding which is funded by government suffers.

“In fact some heads of schools have had their properties and homes vandalised” by hungry and angry students.

The President of CHASS asked government to scrap the subventions and have students pay if it cannot sustain the programme.

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Source: Myjoyonline.com

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