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Tension is said to be mounting at the Tema Parents Association School, following an alleged attempt to re-register the school by executives of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA).
The PTA executives, led by its Chairman, Justice Senyo Dzamefe, an Appeal Court Judge, were also allegedly fingered in a plot to seize and operate the accounts of the school in their name. The management and teachers of the school do not understand why the PTA executives, who are yet to be inaugurated, should make attempts to re-register and manage the school.
However, at an emergency meeting called by the PTA last Thursday, February 3, 2011, to calm nerves down as a result of the impasse between the staff of the school and the PTA, Justice Dzamefe described as 'palpably false' the allegations leveled against him and his executives.
According to him, the intervention by the PTA is to bring sanity and 'checks and balance' in the day-to-day running of the school.
The authorities of the school, alarmed by the decision, denounced the existence of the PTA in a memorandum dated January 18, 2011, and copied to the executives of the PTA, citing the aforementioned grievances among many others, as their bone of contention.
'Tema Parents' Association School, as we all know, is registered as a company limited by guarantee. It is guided by regulations (referring to Companies Code, 1963 Tema Parents' Association School Regulations of Company Limited by Guarantee, and presented by C.K.S. Kodi, Chartered Secretary).
'No where in the school's regulations, or in the conditions of service, is PTA mentioned. The subscribers of the school must have good reason why they did not incorporate PTA in the structure of the school. We do not need a PTA to run the school. There is no where in Ghana that school funds are kept by PTA, in a PTA accounts, or any account operated by PTA,' noted the management and teachers of the school, in the memorandum to the executives of the PTA. They also noted: 'We are very mindful of the fact that an attempt was made by the PTA to re-register the school in their name. We deem all these actions and utterances as interference in the day-to-day running of the school, and this is disturbing the peace of the school.'
According to the management of the school, somewhere last year, in the course of a crisis created by the former headmistress in challenging the legitimacy of the Board of Directors, a group of parents emerged as mediators, with the sole objective of resolving the impasse between the two bodies.
The group, the management of the school said, failed to achieve its objective, after giving it all the necessary cooperation, and was surprised see the group 'metamorphose itself into an Interim Management Committee, and subsequently, into a substantive PTA executive.'
The formation of the PTA, according to the management of the school, had brought about the current power struggle, as to who should run the school. A situation, it said, had brought fear and panic among the teaching body and other working staff of the school.
The management has, therefore, resolved not to cooperate with the PTA executives, since the 'Company Code which governs the school has not been amended to include the PTA.'
It however, requested for a Board of Directors, and therefore welcomed 'anybody who has any influence, whatsoever, should channel it towards bringing a Board in place.'
In sharp rebuttal to the allegations against the PTA executives, Justice Dzamefe said it had never be the intention of the PTA executives to re-register the Tema Parents' Association School in their name, neither has it be their intention to intrude into the affairs of the school.
Justice Dzamefe, in an address to parents who attended the emergency meeting on the school's premises last Thursday, said the stand of the PTA was to call for an independent audit of the school's accounts, and verification of the teachers' qualifications, since a recent ranking of the school in the Tema metropolis was not encouraging.
'The school is currently placed 28th on the table of best performing schools in the Tema Metropolis. This is not encouraging, and we called for verification of the teachers' qualifications, and to know from the Ghana Education Service, whether the teachers were placed under the right subjects. Our second request was for an independent audit of the school's accounts. My brothers and sisters, these are the two issues that we requested for, which has landed us in trouble,' lamented Justice Dzamefe.
According to him, as a result of a court action instituted against the school by its former headmistress, Mrs. Nsaki Kaseem, there was no Board of Directors, and a substantive headmaster or headmistress in place to run the school.
The situation, he said, had affected the school, since its Ecobank account, of which Mrs. Kaseem is a signatory, had been frozen by the court, resulting in a stay of execution motion filed by the out-gone Board of Directors.
Justice Dzamefe further said the accounts of the school had for the past two years not been audited. With a student population of about 1,500, the school currently takes GH¢470 per head, with about GH¢705,000 being paid into the coffers of the school per term. This huge amount, according to Justice Dzamefe, had been redirected into the Teachers Welfare accounts, an interest yielding account with two signatories.
'Fellow parents, because the school's Ecobank accounts have been frozen by the court, the teachers have been encouraging parents to pay hard cash and not cheques, to enable them have access to the money. The monies been collected are therefore, channeled into the Teachers Welfare Account, being operated by two signatories. This, I said, is unacceptable, since anything could happen,' he said.
But, the school authorities, when contacted, denied ever channeling monies belonging to the school into the welfare account.
According to the management of the school, due to the aforementioned court action, it had temporarily opened a new account with Unibank, where monies meant for the school are paid into that account, pending directives from existing subscribers of the school.
Justice Dzamefe also denied allegations against the PTA of attempting to re-register the school in its name.
He said their intention was to register the Tema Parents Association School PTA as a company limited by guarantee, under the Company's Code of 1963.
The objectives, he said, was to give the PTA the needed legal power to help parents and teachers of the school have a common understanding, and better appreciation of their education and social responsibilities, and also to facilitate the process of reaching agreements between parents and teachers, or the best solutions to common problems affecting the children of the school, as well as seeing to the welfare of teachers.
Parents who attended the emergency meeting pleaded with the PTA executives to find a lasting solution to the impasse, by engaging the management and teachers of the school in a dialogue in the interest of their children.
