Kennedy Agyapong, head of the Defense and Interior Committee today, Thursday, July 21, 2022 presented a report to the house. It can be recalled that on June 13, 2020 some students of the Islamic Senior High School in the Ashanti Region sustained injuries after police opened tear gas on them. According to other sources gun shots were fired in the area.
The students were protesting about bad road in front of the school which lacked speed ramps. The students had blocked the road and the police were called in to remove the roadblock. In dispersing the crowd, there was a confrontation as some of the students pelted the Police with stones while the police opened tear gas on them.
Parliament opened investigations into the matter under the auspices of the Defense and Interior Committee. In the report the committee recommended that the Ministry of Education provides the Islamic school with basic and infrastructure amenities such as classrooms, residential facilities for teachers, laboratories because the school lacks such things.
This provision is to address case of high population in the school. The committee also agreed that lack of appropriate road traffic infrastructure and speed control for easy crossing caused the incident. The Ministry of Roads was tasked to work on speed ramps in the area.
Again they asked for the Regional Director of the Department of Urban Roads in the Ashanti Region to be sanctioned for failing to provide speed ramps although he has received several letter in that regard. The Ghana Police was also cited for lacking appropriate logistics to respond to crowd control and it lacks ability to avoid conflict of interest in conducting fair investigations. Parliament was to set up a bi-partisan committee to investigate the issue of the police involvement.
According to the Ranking member the Police fired rubber bullets as well as AK-47 bullets. He wondered what would have happened if the pullets strayed and hit the students. He supported the calls and asked for a committee to be formed to investigate this.
Source: Operanews
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