The Conference of Heads of Private Second-Cycle Schools (CHOPSS) and the Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) have sent an SOS message to the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, appealing to him to help save their collapsing business.
They want the President to give them a stimulus package that will revitalize their business and make them robust and competitive once again.
They claim that the impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has had dire consequences on their business, making them unable to pay salaries to their teaching staff as well as meet some other operational costs.
The Public Relations Officer of CHOPPS, Naphtali A. Kyei-Baffour, in an interview with Accra-based Okay FM monitored by www.politicoghana.com, on Monday May 18, 2020, said, “We are appealing to the President to give us a stimulus package. Because the more the ban on social gatherings, the more our teachers are suffering. If we had even been allowed to return to school, the effects would have been minimized”.
He said as a first to their request, they have applied to the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), the body mandated to manage the Coronavirus Alleviation Programme (CAP) Business Support Scheme, for help and are awaiting for the programme to be launched so they could have access to the packages available.
Further to that, he appealed to parents whose children are in the private schools and are owing school fees for second term to try as much as possible to redeem themselves to enable them pay the salary of their staff.
“We are appealing to the parents to at least make some part payment to enable the schools also pay their staff some money to sustain them because we are in this together and so let us all come together and help address this challenge”, he pleaded.
According to him, once the schools are liberated from the mishap, ” We will surely catch up and repay whatever was given to us”.
In all a total of 10,000 private basic schools and 380 private senior high schools are in need of government’s support to survive.
