Kumasi — The Ministry of Roads and Highways, as a matter of urgency, is to provide pedestrian crossing and speed ramps at the Islamic Senior High School at Abrepo Junction, in the Ashanti Region, to ensure safe usage of the road by both motorists and pedestrians.
The Director of the Department of Urban Roads in the Ashanti Region is to be sanctioned for failing to provide pedestrian crossing and speed ramps on that stretch of the road, in spite of several letters sent to him in that regard.
These are part of the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Interior chaired by the Member of Parliament for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong, set up to look into police shooting incident at the Islamic Senior High School at Abrepo Junction on June 13, 2022.
The committee believed that the police "acted excessively, and used ammunition such as live bullets, rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray which were dangerous and potentially placed the lives of many students at risk."
According to the Committee, the police should be trained regularly to deal with demonstrations which involve relatively younger people such as students.
It furthermore, indicated that the Ghana Police Service lacked the appropriate logistics to enable the service respond promptly to challenges of crowd control, and the ability of the service to avoid conflict of interest on its part, in conducting fair investigations.
Again it recommended that the Ministry of Education should provide the school with more basic amenities such as classrooms, a big auditorium, dormitories, and residential facilities for teachers, as well as well-equipped laboratories, among others, to address the challenges in the school.
The report pointed out that the committee, after a thorough deliberation, concluded that the student population in the Islamic Senior High School was so high that amenities and existing infrastructure were not commensurate with student population.
The committee also recommended to Parliament to set up a bi-partisan committee to further investigate the matter, even though it acknowledged that the Ghana Police Service took the initiative to visit the injured students at the various hospitals.
It extended its sympathies and commendation to the Ghana Police Service in general for visiting the injured students.
The committee recommended that the seven officers who sustained various injuries on their body such as their forehead, legs, and fingers should be provided with the needed medical attention.
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Meanwhile, the Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah, has indicated that there had not been any pedestrians' knockdown involving the students of the Islamic Senior High School in front of the school.
"The initial information that came out that several students of the Islamic Senior High School have been knocked down was false."
"We have checked back two years from Abrepo junction up to Kumasi Girls Senior High School, even though there had been accidents where people had been knocked down, not one involved a student," he emphasized.
He was responding to a question as to why there had not been the provision of ramble strips (speed ramp) in front of the school as recommended by the Committee's report at a meeting with the management of the Urban Road Department on Tuesday, as part of a familiarisation tour of selected government institutions.
It is recalled that students of the school, on June 13, 2022 embarked on a protest to register their displeasure over pedestrian knockdowns involving the students on the road in front of the school.
