Students to pay for vandalised property
Senior high school students found destroying school property would be made to pay for the damage, the Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman, has warned.
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Government, she said, was using so much money to provide infrastructure and other facilities in schools so it was important that they were not destroyed.
“We are always complaining of infrastructure, aren’t we ? Now out of your anger you destroy the infrastructure. Those students should be made to pay, it is as simple as that,” she said in an interview with the Junior Graphic.
She, therefore, charged school authorities to implement the rules on the destruction of school property.
“The rules are there, I am not creating them; the school authorities should apply them,” she stressed.
Last year, for instance, students of the Bolgatanga Senior High School (BIGBOSS) in the Upper East Region went on rampage following the death of a Form Three Business student at the Bolgatanga Government Hospital.
The student, identified as Emmanuel Bawa, passed out after falling and foaming at the mouth.
School property and those of some teachers, including a saloon car belonging to the senior housemaster were subsequently destroyed by the students of the school due to the death of their mate.
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Prof. Opoku-Agyeman cautioned students against engaging in acts of vandalism to register their protest when their grievances are not addressed, stressing that the destruction of school property would not solve their problems.
The minister said, for instance, students could use the students’ representative councils (SRCs) in their schools when they were unhappy about certain things since the SRCs were always part of decision-making in schools.
“ I am not sure what you want to achieve by getting angry and burning a school bus and so on ...You can’t take this far in life because if anytime you are upset about something and you destroy property, society is not going to be happy with you”.
She added that students were not only in school to study but, among other things, to learn how to control their emotions since they would need that in the workplace.
She asked, “are you saying when you are employed and you are angry with your boss you will destroy the business? They will lock you up,” she pointed out.