Femi Ashekun/
As schools prepare to reopen for graduating pupils this week after months of closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, Ogun State government has requested students in private secondary schools to undergo a mandatory N25,000 COVID-19 test before they would be allowed to resume.
The state government made this known in a statement by the Special Adviser to the Governor on Basic and Secondary Education, Mrs Ronke Soyombo.
The state government said no boarding school student would be allowed to resume without a valid negative COVID-19 test certificate.
It also asked the parents to take their wards to designated places for the test between Friday and Monday.
According to the statement, parents will need to pay the levy and get a certificate to show that their children are COVID-19 negative before they could resume school.
The statement reads in part, “The government will bear the full costs of the COVID-19 Test for all the boarding SS3 students in the state-owned public schools.
“All private school owners are also expected to ensure that all their boarding students are certified COVID-19 test negative before being admitted into their boarding facilities.
“To further assist the private schools, Ogun State Government has negotiated a huge discount in the cost of COVID-19 Test with some healthcare service providers
“However, private school owners and parents are free to engage any other service provider of their choice provided that the service provider is certified by NCDC as COVID-19 Test service provider.
“Indeed, Certificate of negative COVID-19 Test from other locations across the country will be tenable provided, as usual, it is from an NCDC certified centre and the test has been performed within 72 hours of the date of resumption.”
Some of the affected parents have, however, faulted the decision of the government to ask them to pay N25,000 on each pupil before they would be allowed to resume.
The dissatisfied parents today converged on the MTR Specialist Hospital, Oke-Mosan, Abeokuta, the designated place for the pupils in Abeokuta, to protest the decision.
Many of them lamented that the economic reality in the country has made it difficult to pay such an amount of money.
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