The Oyo state government on Wednesday directed the primary 6, JSS3 and SSS3 students across the state to wear nose masks while resuming school next Monday to prevent the spread of Coronavirus pandemic. The state Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Hon. Olasunkanmi Olaleye, gave the directive while responding to questions from journalists at his office in Ibadan, the state capital.
Hon Olaleye said various trainings have been given to categories of school heads, principals and teachers on how to monitor and report any sign of illness that showed symptoms of Covid-19 to the authority.
“Students are to come to school with their facemasks and follow instructions on the guidelines from the management, these are imperative the government cannot lock down forever and education is an aspect of life that should not be allowed to suffer backwardness,” he said.
The Commissioner said the state has set up Emergency Operation Centers (EOCs) in Ibadan and at zonal levels and as well as appointed Incident Managers for each school who would report any emergency directly to the EOCs through special communication lines.
Emphasising that each class would have “a warder whose obligation is to relate with the incident managers on his or her observations.”
The commissioner disclosed that other measures already put in place by the Oyo state government include, “the compulsory hand-washing points at the school entrances and at the entrance of each classroom as well as alcohol-based sanitizer for the use of students and teachers.
“Throughout last week, what we have been doing was to train school heads and teachers of public and private schools, preparing them for this task of taking firm control of preventing the spread of Covid-19 into our schools as we resume. Each school has been mandated to strictly enforce social distancing and observe other protocols against Covid-19 among teachers and students as laid down by NCDC.
“I can boldly tell you that with these measures in place, the children are more safer with us in school than even many homes, imagine situations whereby students are asked to go to private lessons that provided no safety measure, many follow their parents to the market and workplaces where possibility of contracting the virus is high, so they are rather better kept at school than home.”
Hon. Olasunkanmi said the fear being exercised by the general public over the resumption was appreciated by the government, as it had helped the administration to still go deeply into keeping to stringent measures to avert spread of the virus.
