Provide security to protect students at private hostels – MP
The Member of Parliament for Afigya-Sekyere East, Mr David Hennric Yeboah, has urged owners of private hostels on university campuses to provide adequate security to protect students who reside in such shelters.
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In a statement on the floor of the House on Wednesday, he said most of the hostels were located in distant areas away from major university facilities such as lecture halls and libraries and, as a result, students were bound to leave and return to their hostels very late in the night.
The situation, he said, had given rise to widespread theft, assault, rape and armed robberies at various private hostels on the campuses.
He said universities needed to craft policies on safety and security for private hostels which housed some of their students.
“This policy should border on issues of sexual harassment, possession of weapons and illegal drugs, among other things. In this policy statement, the university should show its commitment to dealing with the possession of rifles, shotguns and illegal drugs by students by tightening security in these hostels,” he said.
Access to private hostels, he said, should be restricted to residents, approved guests and approved members of the university community.
To ensure that, he added, all private hostels should be made to establish porters’ lodges as was done in traditional halls of residence.
“Mr Speaker, porters should be made to keep a register containing comprehensive records of students who reside in these hostels,” he said, adding that police and military patrols should be provided.
The university security personnel, he said, should be posted to some of the hostels and equipped with the necessary tools to help them go about their duties smoothly.
Mr Yeboah said Close Circuit Television (CCT) cameras could be installed on major corridors and compounds of the private hostels and monitored from the porters lodges.
Students, on their part, he said, must be encouraged to report criminal activities or emergencies occurring at the hostels immediately to the porters or front desk officers at the private students’ hostels or to any university security officer on patrol in person or in writing.
Where necessary, he said, the local police must be involved.
“Mr Speaker, in our quest to make university education stimulating and accessible to all who wish to pursue one, it is important to ensure the safety and security of students, especially those living in private hostels in and around campus,” he stated.
Contributing, the member for Ho Central, Mr Benjamin Komla Kpodo (NDC), said the insecurity on university campuses affected not only students in private hostels but lecturers as well.
He said on the campus of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW) for example, robbers had, in recent times attacked lecturers and robbed them of their cars.
Security, he said, therefore, needed to be tightened not in specific areas on the university campuses but on the entire campus.
Turning the spotlight on the private hostels, he said they needed to be properly registered and how they should operate clearly spelt out.
Mr Kofi Okyere-Agyekum (NPP, Fanteakwa South) said the security of students in the universities was the responsibility of the universities.
He, however, called for a holistic view of the issue of security in the country, saying that even MPs were not safe in their homes.
The MP for Asante-Akim Central, Mr Kwame Anyimadu-Antwi, urged the universities to thoroughly check the background of some of the foreign students they admitted, sayin that some of them were a bad influence on their Ghanaian counterparts.
By Mark-Anthony Vinorkor