Education Ministry will regularise title to lands - Minister

Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, Deputy Minister for Education, in charge of General Education, has said that the Ministry would ensure that all lands belonging to schools have regularised land titles and registered to avoid encroachment.

“Those without fence will also be protected with walls so that they will not be taken away from the institutions by squatters.”

Dr Adutwum gave the assurance during a monitoring exercise over the West African Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), which took his team to the Kinbu Senior High Technical and the St. Thomas Aquinas Senior High, both in the Greater Accra Region.

Ms Gloria Adukonu, Headmistress of the Kinbu Senior High School had complained about the encroachment of their lands.

He promised that the lawyers of the Education Ministry would be contacted for the next line of action and school lands should not be taken away by encroachers because they need more space to operate.

The Minister said, the visit was to boost the morale of students, especially, when the candidates at Kinbu were writing the Building Construction paper, in fulfilment of government’s priority to promote technical education.

Ms Adukonu briefed the Deputy Minister about their inability to expand due to the limited space after parts of their lands had been sold by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to developers whilst some portions had also been encroached by traders and other developers.

The Octagon, the AMA as well as the Consicar buildings were all meant to be the school field, garden/workshop and for stores, respectively.

She explained that letters had been written to the Ghana Education Service as well as the Ministry of Education and copied the Metropolitan Chief Executive, the Member of Parliament in the area for the squatters to be evicted but to no avail.

She Gloria that the school was in need of a library and assembly hall as they currently held events in the open space.

“If permission is given, the school will renovate the structures left behind by the colonial masters for use,” she appealed.

Mr Cyril Kwadjo Dadey, the Headmaster of St. Thomas Aquinas, thanked government for donating 200 mono-desks, 40 computers and their accessories and a 12-unit-classroom which is under construction.

520 candidates are writing in Kinbu Senior High, whereas those of the St Aquinas were 581 and so far, the process had been smooth.