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The Minister for Communication and Digitalization and the Member of Parliament for the Ablekuma West Constituency, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has said every public school in her constituency has an ICT Lab.
She made the claim on May 30, 2024, when she was hosted as a guest in a one-on-one interview on Asempa FM’s political talk show EKOSIISEN. She made the claim between 2:14:12 minutes and 2:14:20 minutes of the radio programme which was streamed live on Facebook.
Fact-Check Ghana has verified the claim and presents the facts below.
Claim: “ Every Public school in our constituency has an ICT Lab”
Verdict: False
Explanation
To verify the claim, the team visited some public schools in the Ablekuma West Municipality. The Ablekuma West Constituency covers communities including Dansoman, Sahara, Gbegbeyise, Agege, Glefe, Opetekwe and Shiabu(See here and here).
The public schools within the Ablekuma West Municipality Fact-Check Ghana visited are:
– Dansoman A cluster of Schools
– Dansoman B cluster of schools
– Star of the Sea Catholic School
– Ebenezer Senior High School
– Dansoman Senior High.
– Gbegbeyise Community School.
The team spoke with teachers, students and non-teaching staff of the various schools.
What Fact-Check Ghana found
Ebenezer Senior High School, Star of the Sea Catholic School and Gbegbeyise Community were noted to have functioning ICT Lab.
The Dansoman ‘A’ Cluster of Schools consists of four schools: Dansoman 1 Community School, Dansoman 4 Community School, Tunga Islamic Community School, and St. Augustine School. Among the four schools, only Dansoman 1 community school has an ICT lab. The three remaining schools have none.
The students in the three schools without an ICT lab further confirmed that the Dansoman 1 Community School ICT lab is only used by students of Dansoman 1 Community School.
On the other hand, the Dansoman ‘B’ cluster of schools consists of four schools: Dansoman 2 Community School, Dansoman 3 Community School, Dansoman 6 Community School and Zion School. Among the four schools under the cluster, the Dansoman 6 community school is the only one that has an ICT lab. Again, the students confirmed that the ICT lab is only available to the students of the Dansoman 6 community school, not the entire schools under the Dansoman ‘B’ cluster.
In conclusion, while Fact-Check Ghana did not visit every public school in the Ablekuma West constituency, most of the selected schools the team visited did not have ICT labs. This makes Ursula Owusu-Ekuful’s claim that every public school in her constituency has an ICT lab false.
