Some of the demonstrating students
Students of Prestea Senior High School (SHS) in the Western Region last Friday vented their spleen on some community members and drivers who use the school’s campus as shortcut or main access road.
According to the students, incessant speeding by vehicles and motorbike riders on their campus have led to multiple knockdowns and injuries of students over the years.
They asserted that in many of the cases, motorbike riders who knocked down students flee the scene, leaving school authorities to bear the medical costs of the injured students.
The students explained that about five years ago, the Prestea community appealed to the school to allow vehicles use the campus road temporarily while repairs were being made to their main access road.
“We learnt that the community asked for just three months. However, the community has continued to rely on the campus route ever since,” the students disclosed.
They claimed that the situation has become unsafe and disruptive to academic work on daily basis.
The students, therefore, abandoned their classrooms last Friday to protest.
They demanded that the authorities and other stakeholders should immediately restrict the community members from using the campus as a thoroughfare.
Some of the students moved their desks from their classrooms to block the road, while others wore red bands to express their frustration.
Police personnel later arrived to maintain order.
Speaking to journalists, the school’s boys’ prefect, Abdul Basit, insisted that the students can no longer allow motorists to use their campus as their main road.
“The community came to plead with the school about five years ago that they wanted to use the campus road for three months to enable them complete a bridge that connects their main road.
“It has been five years, and they are still using the campus road. A number of our students have sustained various degrees of injuries as a result of knockdowns,” he alleged.
He pointed out that speeding vehicles and motorbikes also distract learning activities, adding, “And we cannot continue to endure this.”
“We abandoned our classrooms to embark on this peaceful demonstration to register our anger to the community that enough is enough,” he stressed.
From Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi