Aflao Police calms rioting SPACO students

Some students of St Paul’s Senior High School (SPACO) in the Ketu South Municipality have gone on rampage to register their displeasure about what they termed ‘unfair treatment from some tutors’.

The rampaging students made up of second year gold track and final year students who returned to school as part of the partial reopening of schools across the country, threw stones that broke louvre blades of some buildings and the security post, vandalising the notice board and Veronica bucket at the entrance to the School.

A visit by the Ghana News Agency (GNA) to the School on Monday showed pieces of cement blocks scattered around the School’s entrance and broken louvre blades scattered at the security post and other rooms.

A form two student who pleaded anonymity told the GNA that the student body was having issues with a number of things in the school since reopening, but the immediate cause of Sunday’s riot was sparked by failure on the part of a tutor to honour his promise to some students, compelling them to plan their action.

“We have issues and one of them is food. The food is not good at all, but what really caused the riot was that a teacher seized a student’s phone and then punished the student in question with the promise that when he’s done, he would release the phone to him.

“After the said student finished with the punishment and went for his phone, the teacher refused to give the phone to him. He’s not the only person the teacher did that thing to because he has about five or six phones of students in his possession,” the student added.

Mr Augustine Dziwornu Amedeker, Headmaster of SPACO however, was not readily available for comment on the issue.

Mr Patrick Kwapong, Aflao Divisional Police Commander in an interview with the GNA, said at about 1630 hours on Sunday, Reverend Father Oscar Kuebudornye, the Chaplain of SPACO reported the disturbance in the school.

He said the demonstration broke out following the seizure of three phones from three students by a tutor, who also later punished them for defying the ban on students to use phones in schools by the Ghana Education Service (GES) without returning the phone to them as earlier promised.

Mr Kwapong said he followed up to the school with his officers to ensure no serious damage was caused saying, “as an old student of SPACO myself, I teamed up with the Assistant headmaster of the school and one other teacher also old students, to talk to the students.” Calm has since returned to the school.