You’re meant to protect children’s interest – CRI to NAGRAT

Children’s rights group Child Rights International (CRI) has criticized as unfortunate the treatment being meted out to the two Rastafarian students by the Achimota School and the Ghana Education Service.

It comes after the GES backtracked on its earlier directive to the Achimota School after management rejected the directive to admit the students.

Prior to the u-turn of the GES, NAGRAT and the Old Students Association of the school had fiercely opposed the directive of the GES with NAGRAT arguing that it was allowing the students with dreadlocks into the school as a threat to conformity and amounts to deregulating the school’s system which will result in chaos.

Speaking to Starr News Executive-director of CRI, Charles Appiah, said it is unfortunate that the interest of the students has not been prioritized.

He said, “I’m surprised that people are behaving in a manner to protect the integrity of institutions rather than protecting the integrity of the children and that’s unfortunate.”

“That has been the behavior of our institutions and when you go into most of these things, what I’ve even realized is that most of these rules and regulations that they’re so-called are based on conventional meanings and these are not participatory events where children even have a say. At that level, the constitution provides that children must have a say in matters that concerns them.”

“If you say that people want to regulate the school, after all, the institutions are in the hands of GES, so if anything goes wrong in that environment, it is them that will be blamed. Let’s always look at things from the perspective that will always be beneficial to our children.”



Mr Appiiah further stated “but what will happen to a child with Rasta and how is that going to affect the learning ability of that child. So, far as I’m concerned, it’s an abuse of the child’s right, and institutions must be held responsible for the things that they do in the protection of children’s rights in this country.”

Lashing out NAGRAT following their press conference, he noted “and they have been deemed as teachers to protect the very interest of children. So, if they are speaking that way then it means that there’s a lot of work that we need to do to protect children because children have always been at the mercy of people and we don’t think about them.”

“We will do our part and I’m sure that latest by Friday you’ll hear from us [CRI].”