Bo Stadium Tragedy: Are These School Girls Not Supposed to be in Their Classrooms?

The First Lady of Sierra Leone has embarked on national distribution of Sanitary Pad to School going pupils across the country.

The initiative of distributing sanitary pads was launched many years ago by the first lady.

She has distributed pads in many parts of the country over the past years and thousands of girls have benefitted from the scheme.

Many Sierra Leoneans home and abroad applaud the pad distribution scheme since its introduction.

However, this latest round of pad distributions, I have been following the distributions of these pad and massages delivered by various stakeholders during these distributions.

Last week, the unfortunate accidents at the Bo stadium left scores of pupils injured and hospitalised.

As a result of the Bo stadium accident, we some people trying to exaggerate things by saying many children were injured and some had even died.

While we also saw counter explanations from government handlers and Ministry of Education official downplaying the severity of the accident.

To date, I have not seen any official statement from the government telling Sierra Leoneans how much children fell when the stadium railings broke, and how badly those involved were injured.

In addition, today Monday 6th February 2023, I have seen videos from Kono where according to reports about ten thousand pupils from twenty schools across Kono District converged in Koidu Town in what looks like a mini stadium to receive their own supply of sanitary pads.

From the aforementioned, I am tempted to ask the following questions: are schools in Sierra Leone on holiday at this time?

Are these girls not supposed to be in their classrooms being taught by their teachers and taken note?

Don’t the teachers have syllabuses to cover during a specific teaching period?

Let us say, some of these female pupils are from mixed schools, are the boys taking classes while girls out there scrambling for sanitary pads, or have the boys been sent home since their female counterparts are receiving the pads?

Before the schoolgirls receive their sanitary pads, which new massages do the first lady and officials of the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary School have for them?

Why do the planners of this sanitary pad distribution program choose school-going days rather than weekends?

It is on this note I ask whether these school girls are not supposed to be in their classrooms.
I rest my case