Mahama's Better Ghana laptops stolen

Despite frantic efforts by the government to make children of school-going age ICT-inclined by spending millions of Ghana cedis to distribute free laptops, some unscrupulous people are thwarting the efforts by robbing students off the equipment.

Some miscreants of society have been grabbed by the Kasoa police for allegedly robbing a number of the Better Ghana laptops belonging to the former school of the football icon Michael Essien at Awutu Breku in the Central region.

The arrest followed a robbery report made by authorities of the St Killien Roman Catholic School. The suspects were arrested several days after the robbery following a thorough investigation conducted by the police.

The school’s authorities discovered on May 1, 2013 at around 8am that the computer lab of the school had been broken into and 11 laptops they benefited from the Better Ghana Agenda had been stolen from the lab together with their accessories.

The school reported the issue to the Awutu Breku police and investigations were carried out. Upon a tipoff, the police found one of the stolen laptops in the possession of one John Aduful, 26, who is a taxi driver resident at Breku on Friday, May 14 and he was arrested.

Upon further interrogations, the first suspect, Aduful admitted having a stolen item in his possession but said it was given to him by the second accused, one Daniel Ajiri, 26, who is a mechanic resident in Takoradi, to sell on his behalf.

He disclosed Ajiri’s hideout at his residence at Kwesimintim in the Western regional capital, Takoradi upon which the police followed up and arrested him on May 15. The police founder three of the stolen laptops in his possession at the time of the arrest.

Ajiri also named a third suspect during interrogations; the third suspect’s identity is however withheld for security reasons since he has fled and the police are combing the country for his arrest to assist in the investigations.

The District Commander of the Kasoa Police, Chief Superintendent, Ebenezer K. Asare has cautioned all school authorities to police their own property well to avoid facing similar problems in the future since thieves have developed the attraction for the laptops.

He advised schools to fence any office which contains valuable things apart from their computer labs with burglar proofing since they may never be able to retrieve their stolen items even after the culprits have been nabbed.

According to him, suspects are asked to return the stolen items and serve some jail term, but not all are returned since they may have already been sold to people they can no longer locate.