Doughlas Haruna Yakubu, the headmaster of the Ghana Senior High School, called the viral video showing several students allegedly sleeping in toilet cubicles “mischievous” and “a deliberate misrepresentation of facts.”
Mr. Yakubu thinks the journalist fabricated and dramatized the viral videos to harm the school’s reputation.
He continued by saying that the school has enough room to accommodate more students and does not need to transform restrooms into dorms for them.“That facility has been there for so many years, it has never been a dormitory or a storage room, it is a store more or less. In the 60s when Kwame Nkrumah built the rooms, they were washrooms, and so they still have the design of washrooms, but the facility has not been modernised, so they are just small, small cubicles and that is where we keep our chop boxes when students are travelling,” Mr Yakubu told Citi Breakfast Show host Bernard Avle.
“They are never sleeping places,” the headmaster continued.These items that you can see may have been taken from the dorm so that the journalist would be able to cover his videos and leave with them. Students cannot live in those cubicles because they are too small and too hot. This is unfair because there is plenty room here.
He disclosed that there are six restrooms at the school to accommodate all of the male students.
On Sunday, the Ghana Education Service opened an investigation into a video that went viral and showed children sleeping in toilet stalls.Social media users were outraged by the footage, which also highlighted questions about the pupils’ safety and wellbeing under the free SHS regime.
Even though the school has the space to accommodate an additional 300 pupils, some kids are being made to sleep in such appalling conditions, according to the Ghana Education Service.The inquiry is anticipated to be finished in two weeks, and the Senior Housemaster and Headmaster will be obliged to provide a report on the results.
The management expressed their commitment to making sure that children are given a safe learning environment in a statement that was made public, and they promised all stakeholders and the general public that they would continue to place a high priority on the safety and well-being of their pupils.
