Students of Zebilla Senior High Technical School in the Bawku West District of the Upper East Region have no option but to use their washroom for accommodation.

Some of the students who are being housed in a six-seater toilet facility said the situation is so unbearable.

This came to light when members of the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (PIAC) together with a team of journalists from the Institute of Financial and Economic Journalists (IFEJ) visited the school to gain first-hand information about the use of oil money on some on-going projects.

A fire outbreak in 2014 destroyed the main boys’ dormitory of the Zebilla SHTS with a student population of about 1437, causing damage to books and personal belongings of some 400 students.  

This forced school authorities to relocate some of the students into classrooms and toilet facilities.

Currently, between 20 and 30 students share a room in these dormitories. But the students said the heat is always unbearable.

One of the students said, “because of lack of accommodation we are managing with this toilet to be as our dormitory.”

“There are six of us in his toilet and the heat is too much,” another student told Joy News’ Martina Bugri.

The third student said they normally sleep outside during the dry season but that put them at risk of snake bites.”

Assistant headmaster in charge of administration, Bukari Abdulai revealed that the congestion is not only in the dormitories but also in the classrooms.

He said the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) has constructed three pavilions for the school to use as classrooms but that is not enough.

Mr Abdulai said seven classrooms have currently been converted into dormitories to augment the crises.

He said if works on the boy’s dormitory are completed and the rehabilitation works on the burnt boys dormitory is completed it would go a long way to help the school.

Chairman for the PIAC, Prof. Paul Kingsley Buah-Bassuah, did not hide his displeasure on the slow pace of the work.

Nevertheless, he was happy part of the oil revenue had been devoted to the completion of the project.

“Actually, I was informed that this project started in 2012, however, the oil money was given in 2014. If you look around you can see that they really need a two-storey dormitory block but from the look of things you can see that work on the building is not going so fast as expected.

They have called on government to as a matter of urgency complete works on a schoolboy’s dormitory started in 2012.