KUMACA deaths: Disgruntled parent lashes out at authorities, chides them for negligence

Amidst the confusion and controversy surrounding recent deaths recorded at Kumasi Academy (KUMACA), a disgruntled parent has lashed out at school authorities for what he describes as a sheer display of negligence and indifference in the management of the situation.

Abraham Annan Agyei who is the Acting Registrar for Kumasi Technical University and father of a second-year ward in the school complained about how authorities are refusing to put in the necessary effort in addressing the situation despite the deaths of four students already. He also accused management of 'covering up' the real issues while leaving parents and the public in the dark.

He says this won’t be the first record of such an incident in the same school.

Recounting similar situations in previous terms within this year alone, Abraham Annan said; “I monitored developments here last term when this particular thing broke out, I learnt about 5 or 6 students died, they even invited us for a PTA meeting and no single school authority told us anything concrete after we had sat there for several hours. The problem I have with these authorities is the intransparent nature of the way they are handling the things”.

“If there is an epidemic, it is not your fault, you will have to tell us, you can’t tell me that a student population of over 2000, all of them are truck pushers, they know something, you can meet with us and then we share ideas about how to solve the problem. But you come here, even the Regional Minister comes here and they shelve things,” he added.

“They are not treating this kind of thing with transparency. They are not telling us the truth about the causes of the thing and how they are going about it”, he stated.

Speaking to Joynews, he accused management of the school for failing to adopt measures to avoid subsequent outbreaks following similar strange deaths in April this year.

“They promised to set up a small unit here to monitor the disease and the causes, has that thing happened? They told a section of the parents that there’ll be a small unit here to monitor those kind of diseases”. “Since that time, they haven’t told us anything, it looks as if we have all forgotten and we have all gone to sleep.”.

Mr. Annan Agyei threatened to withdraw his ward from the school for fear of any such future eventualities.

“I’m planning to take her away, already, I’ve had some discussions with some people in a certain St. Andrews, a private school in Assin Fosu, these people are not being transparent, the way we are handling the students, is wrong”, he said.

He urged school authorities to take up responsibility and do the honorable thing by meeting with parents, hearing out their concerns and sharing ideas on how to find a definite solution to this outbreak.