Students of SIMMS decline, protest against sleeping in classrooms after fire incident

Correspondence from Ashanti Region

Affected students of a fire outbreak that occurred at SIMMS Senior High School on Friday have opposed a decision by school authorities to make them sleep in classrooms.

According to the students, their woes were going to multiply should the authorities still force them to sleep in classrooms that are characterized by mosquitoes and other unpleasant conditions.

Speaking to GhanaWeb in an exclusive interview, the worried students urged the school authorities, the teachers, and other stakeholders to permit them to leave campus for some time before coming back to school.

The directive was given after the Kwabre East Municipal Director of Education, Baffour Adu Asare visited the school and urged authorities to allow students to use the classrooms temporarily.

The education director who visited the scene to console teachers and affected students further assured them of the directorate's support. He however entreated teachers to immediately write names of all the affected students and the number of items they lost.

Urging teachers to psych affected students, he encouraged students to remain focused since they were not in this alone.

But reacting to the directive for them to use the classrooms for some time, the worried students rejected the decision outrightly, indicating that it was rather going to add more salt to their injuries.

"How can we sleep in classrooms which are full of mosquitoes?"

"We are going to use these classrooms in the night, and the next morning, we may be forced to park our things to pave the way for classes. That is very stressful, isn't it? We are begging them to allow us go home for some time," the students justified.

Items such as mattresses, chop boxes, bedsheets, trunks, and an unspecified amount of cash got burnt during Friday's outbreak that took place at the SIMMS Senior High School.

Fire officers who rushed to the scene to douse the fire are yet to establish the cause of the outbreak.

Meanwhile, some students who spoke to GhanaWeb blamed the situation on the outmoded wiring system in the dormitory.

"We had been complaining severally about the wiring system that had become very old and a death trap," they said.

Watch the students' outburst on GhanaWeb TV below