ASTECH female students protest against harassment

Female students of Ada Senior High Technical School (ASTEC) at Sege in the Sege Constituency of the Greater Accra Region, are on the warpath.

They have threatened to demonstrate against their head master, Mr Obodai Torgbor, if the Ministry of Education does not transfer him from the school.

Led by some final year students, the girls are alleging that their headmaster has constantly been abusing them sexually and arbitrarily caning any female student who declined his romantic advances.

At a meeting with about 40 female students of ASTECH, the group leader, whose name is being withheld, told Weekend Finder that they could not understand why Mr. Torgbor would be storming their bathrooms with long brooms.

She said that on the evening of June 27, 2013, when some of the girls were bathing, the headmaster unexpectedly entered the bathroom with a long broom in his hand and started whacking the girls with the broom.

The girls, in their naked state, rushed out of the bathroom while some fell on the ground and bruising their legs in the process; a Form One student, the leader alleged, was not spared being lashed on her private part.

“Mr Torgbor, who was moving with our headmistress, shamelessly stood with open eyes and watched the nakedness of the other students who fell with their legs opened. Must the headmaster see the naked bodies of the girls?” The student leader queried.

She continued: “Even if the girls disobeyed ASTECH rules, must they be treated that way?”

What Mr Obodai Torgbor does now, the female students alleged, is to go out on dates with the “weak” female students “and with the piles of dossier we have on our headmaster, we will be releasing them one after the other if the Ministry of Education does not transfer the ‘female eater’ from ASTECH”.

Present at the meeting with Weekend Finder at Sege were the 2012/2013 prefects of ASTECH who pledged their support to the female students of the school to go on a demonstration against Mr Torgbor should the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Ministry of Education continue to maintain him in the school.

Four different appointments arranged by Weekend Finder to meet Mr Torgbor to speak on the students’ allegation were not successful as each time the appointment was due, he gave the excuse that he needed to attend to some meeting outside Sege.

Last Friday, when Weekend Finder last checked on him at the school, the school’s security man said Mr Torgbor was attending a party meeting.

Mr Torgbor was posted to head ASTECH in 2011.