At least 19,743 schoolchildren in Ghana’s Eastern, Volta and Greater Accra regions have been affected by the Akosombo and Kpong Dam spillage, Child Rights International (CRI) has reported.

Development Diaries reports that a study by the organisation showed that more than 9,000 of these schoolchildren could not retrieve their learning materials, including uniforms, books, shoes, textbooks and bags from the floods.

It is understood that the schoolchildren affected are from 71 schools in the regions.

The Executive Director of CRI, Brights Appiah, described the situation as unbearable, calling on the Ghana Education Service to come up with an education recovery plan that should be fully implemented.

Also, fearing for the health and safety of these children, Appiah said the study indicated that 90 percent of children in safe havens had reported having contracted one ailment or the other.

‘The top three diseases reported in the havens among children are malaria at 94.3 percent, skin diseases at 70 percent and headaches at 30 percent’, Ghanaian Times quoted Appiah as saying.

‘Reports of psychological issues among children have also been noted with over 95 percent of children reporting anxiety and sadness.

‘About 20 percent of children showed signs of dissociation, refusing to acknowledge the disaster and any impact it may or may not have had on them. This group claims that nothing has changed in their lives and things are just fine’.

Nearly 623,500 children of primary school age are still not enrolled in primary school and one out of four children in the kindergarten age range (from four to five years of age) are not in pre-school, according to the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).

In addition to CRI’s call for the development of an education recovery plan, Development Diaries calls on the government of Ghana to hasten its efforts in providing relief materials and aid support to the areas affected by the flooding.

Photo source: Rodd Waddington