Kumasi teachers worried about increased assaults on teachers
Teachers in the Kumasi metropolis, have expressed grave concern about the continued assaults and brutalities on teachers generally in the course of performing their duties in the classroom.
What they regard as even more serious is the involvement of enlightened people who are supposed to be highly respected and occupy important positions in society in this dastardly act.
Addressing a press conference in Kumasi on Thursday, in reaction to the recent reported cases of assault on teachers, Mr Victor deGraft-Etsison, Metro Chairman of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), warned that teachers will be forced to advise themselves if such obnoxious acts did not stop immediately.
Mr deGraft-Etsison cited one instance where Nana Akwasi Agyeman, a former mayor of Kumasi, led gun-wielding macho men to arrest some teachers of the Dichemso Block B Junior High School and sent them to the Kumasi central police station for using a school building in the school. He also threatened to shoot and kill if they resisted the arrest.
Nana Akwasi Agyeman is accusing the teachers of unlawful entry to the block he constructed on the school compound as a library during his tenure as mayor of Kumasi.
Again, the assemblyman for Duase New Site electoral area, near KNUST is reported to have assaulted a teacher for preventing him, the assemblyman, from winning sand on the school compound.
An “area boy” called Frank Agyare, has also assaulted a teacher of New Tafo M/A school for going to the aid of a school girl who was being assaulted on the school compound. Agyare has been arrested but some thugs in the area have threatened the teachers and the school pupils alike.
Mr deGraft-Etsison, reminded the public that GNAT did not only fight for better working conditions for teachers but also sought to protect and ensure their safety in the course of performing their duties.
He said the teachers were getting fed up and if immediate steps were not taken to stop people from perpetrating such acts, teachers would be forced to take a more radical line of action.
Source: GNA