Some students of the Kumasi Girls’ High School have been allegedly assaulted by joint police and military team deployed to the school to restore calm during riots.
This comes after the students were said to have gone on a rampage on Monday evening after being denied mid-term break. The Ghana Education Service (GES) had earlier released a statement ordering school authorities to take the action as part of measures to halt the spread of Covid-19.
Luv News investigations revealed that the students destroyed the properties of the school.
One of the students who was only identified as Nana narrating the incident to someone on phone was heard crying as she claimed:
“The mistress brought in soldiers and policemen. They have beaten us and stepped on us, I can’t walk. They came in around 8:30 pm to 9 pm. They entered the dormitory with sticks. Some people have even fainted and have been taken away,” she said while sobbing.
Another student also alleged that they were beaten, “because they refused to comply with the directive to stay on campus”.
According to her, “there is inadequate food in the school yet they say they will not let us go home… the soldiers and policemen have beaten up many of us.”
Management of the school is yet to publicly comment on the matter.
Meanwhile, the Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah commenting on the incident indicated that he was not aware of the alleged assaults on the students.
“I have not been informed about that, maybe I will find out from the Police Regional Commander, per the briefing that I was given this morning, I didn’t hear of any assault,” he said. “We asked the security to go there to maintain peace and order so now the place is calm.”
Speaking to JoyNews, he said the issue with students sometimes is that “the moment you want to stop them from doing what they want, at the end of the day someone will come out to say I have been assaulted, even if you push somebody to go back, they will say you have assaulted the person.”
“But I will go there and witness it myself if it’s true that any student has been assaulted and to what extent,” he indicated.
Mr. Osei Mensah noted that the directive was in the interest of the students, “so that they don’t go out and get contact with the virus and this is where the disagreement started between the students and the school authorities.”
“Also the Ghana Health Service, observing the rate at which the Delta variants of the Covid is spreading also feels that it will be better for the students to remain in school,” he told JoyNews’ Nana Yaw Gyimah.
Stressing on the need for the directive, the Regional Minister citing that “if you go to Asanteman, we have several cases of covid there, and one person can just bring it and spread it across the school.”
He, however, assured that “we will talk to the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Health Service to get a common ground for all the students.”
According to him “some skeleton of people (security personnel) were left in the school to educate the student on the need “to be law-abiding and listen to management and then if there are any changes, they will alert them.”
“We didn’t need to put so many security personals there because sometimes it’s also frightening,” he noted.