Taraba private schools resume, comply with pandemic control guidelines

Sylvanus Viashima, Jalingo

Following the directives from the Federal Government for reopening of schools for exit classes, most schools in Jalingo, the Taraba State capital, have resumed, complying with COVID-19 pandemic control guidelines.

Our correspondent, who visited some of the schools, reports that while most of the private schools have made adequate provisions to take care of the students, the same could not be said of most of the public schools.

At the Excellent International School, students who were seeing arriving the school in their face masks had their feet sanitized before proceeding through a steam body sanitizer, hand wash and hand sanitizers.

The school principal Mr Friday Jeremiah, said that the school was adequately prepared to resume full operation for over two months now after acquiring all the needed machines and equipment.

He said that the school has also provided face masks for all the students at no extra cost to the parents and assured that the whole school environment has been sufficiently fumigated and the sitting arrangement properly worked on to accommodate social distancing requirement.

Some of the parents and students who spoke to our correspondent expressed satisfaction with the level of arrangement put in place by the school to protect the students and staff.

At Raddai Metropolitan School Jalingo, adequate provision was made for water and soap and hand sanitizers and students were required to wash hands at the gate while were only admitted with their face masks.

However, some of the public schools visited had no provision for water and soap and hand sanitizers and most of the students were seeing without face masks.

School administrators who spoke to our correspondent in confidence said that they were still awaiting receipt of these items from the State Government and provisions would be made adequately before the week runs out.

Our correspondent reports that students were generally excited to return to school after staying home for several months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.