By Kemi Olatunde
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As part of its corporate social responsibilities, Ondo State Primary Health Care Development Agency (OSPHCDA) has distributed school uniforms to indigent pupils of some Primary schools in Akure.
Representative of the Agency’s Permanent Secretary and a Public Health Nurse, Mrs Mercy Bello said that some of the indigent pupils were discovered during routine school health sensitization visits carried out in the previous term.
According to her, it was embarrassing that some of them were without school uniform, while some others put on tattered ones adding that, this, has brought inferiority complex to the psyche of the pupils.
She said while giving the reports of the visits as part of her statutory duties, to the Permanent Secretary, Dr Francis Akanbiemu , especially on the discovery of the indigent pupils, the Permanent Secretary and some staff of the Agency decided to make personal donations for onward transmission to the affected school authorities to quickly effect actions on purchase of the uniforms.
According to her, the money was given to the schools which she said has made possible the distributions of the uniforms to the pupils.
Some of the beneficiaries, Ibrahim Dada and Ologbon Ebunoluwa, of St Andrews Primary School, Isikan, who said they hardly eat at home, expressed their joy of being integrated into the school properly with the uniforms stating that they had been hopeless because their parents could not afford the uniforms.
Similarly a 12-year- old Haruna Miracle, of St Francis Catholic Primary School, Oke-padi, Akure, who could not hide his joy after putting on the new uniform, said he has taken to visiting parties and event centres to pick empty water bottles for sales to be able to buy writing materials for use in the school.
In their separate speeches, Head Mistress of St Andrews Primary School Isikan, Mrs Deborah Akerele and her counterpart from St Francis Catholic Primary School, Oke- padi Akure, Mrs Folasede Olorunfemi, described the gesture as first of its kind to come from government workers from any agency in the state.
The two school Administrators who were highly elated and full of thanks to the agency, urged parents to show more interests in the education of their children/wards rather than Aso-ebi and worldly affairs.
In all, 25 pupils benefitted from the school uniform distributions.
The Hope gathered that efforts are in pipeline to extend the exercise to other primary schools in the state.
