Simon Osei Mensah

The Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah, has reacted to the alleged assault of some students of the Kumasi Girls’ High School by joint police and military team.

According to him, he was not aware of the alleged assaults on the students.

“I have not been informed about that, maybe I will find out from the Police Regional Commander, per the briefing that I was given this morning, I didn’t hear of any assault,” he said.

“We asked the security to go there to maintain peace and order so now the place is calm,” he said.

Speaking to JoyNews, he said the issue with students sometimes is that “the moment you want to stop them from doing what they want, at the end of the day someone will come out to say I have been assaulted, even if you push somebody to go back, they will say you have assaulted the person.

“But I will go there and witness it myself if it’s true that any student has been assaulted and to what extent,” he indicated.

He noted that the directive was in the interest of the students, “so that they don’t go out and get contact with the virus and this is where the disagreement started between the students and the school authorities.”

“Also the Ghana Health Service, observing the rate at which the Delta variant of the Covid is spreading also feels that it will be better for the students to remain in school,” he told JoyNews’ Nana Yaw Gyimah.

Stressing on the need for the directive, the Regional Minister said “if you go to Asanteman, we have several cases of COVID-19 there, and one person can just bring it and spread it across the school.”

He, however, assured that “we will talk to the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Health Service to get a common ground for all the students.”

According to him “some people (security personnel) were left in the school to educate the students on the need to be law-abiding and listen to management and then if there are changes, they will alert them.

“We didn’t need to put so many security personnel there because sometimes it’s also frightening.”