People in the neighbourhood of the school with knowledge of the situation have described the comfortable intruders as junkies, weed smokers and the mentally challenged.

They are said to pose a danger to students and staff of the school.

The uncompleted facility has the first and second floors tiled, but with a ripped-off roof, while the wooden window frames have rotten away.

At the moment, it is surrounded with overgrown weeds not far from a classroom block whose top floor has been converted into a dormitory because of the large number of students.

At the base of the infrastructure, dried faecal matter is dotted on the tiles, while caked cement, dirty clothing, empty plastic bottles, jute bags and empty plastic bags, among other things, lay carelessly about.

Wiring

The Daily Graphic team that visited the facility also observed that majority of the cables in the wiring system in the facility were long gone, with only a few sticking out of their sockets.

Reptiles and rodents were also a common sight.

The clear and present danger to the school was evident when the Daily Graphic, accompanied by a member of staff of the school, came face to face with a young man in his 30s emerging from one of the rooms.

The room had a mattress he used as bed, a pillow, a blue and white cloth similar to one of the uniforms of the students of the school, a black backpack and some empty cans he apparently used as cooking utensils.

There was a fireplace made up of two pieces of cement blocks with burnt firewood in the middle, an evidence that he had been cooking.

In one other room, he had connected his phone to what looked like a solar board placed in the direction of the sun to generate power.

The young man, who said he hailed from Techiman, was seen wearing a white shirt over black shorts.

His countenance was like someone who had been smoking but when he was questioned, he said he had only been sleeping.

He was subsequently asked to leave the uncompleted structure or be handed over to the police.

Authorities

The school authorities said the structure had been abandoned for about 10 years now.

During a tour round the facility, another young man wearing a cap was also seen emerging from the bush behind the abandoned facility. When confronted as to where he was coming from, he said he had gone to defecate in the bush.

Miscreants

The Headmistress of the school, Rejoice Acolor, called for the speedy completion of the facility to accommodate staff and to enhance security.

She said the social miscreants who occupied the facility often scaled the school wall to have access to it. Occasionally, she said National Security visited the school and that reports had also been made to the police.

A teacher, she said, once had his hand slashed, with his phone taken away.

“There were mad people inside. When I brought the police to sack one of them, the person agreed to leave. This is a man who was attacking the teachers. He has even come to my house to warn me before,” she said.

Two weeks ago, she said, a mad person beat up one of the teachers.

Source: Graphic.com.gh

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Speaking at the grand durbar of the 26th General Assembly of TTAG held at the St. Francis College of Education, Hohoe on Friday, 22nd July 2022, Mr Dzunu said, contractors have abandoned major projects in Colleges of Education since 2016.

He explained that the Government of Ghana, in 2016, awarded some contracts for the construction of lecture halls, dormitories, classrooms and teacher’s bungalows among others but contractors abandoned their works at the preparatory stage, the situation he said is causing infrastructural challenges.

He added that the colleges of education are bedeviled with infrastructural challenges, challenges which have negatively affected effective academic work in most colleges of education.

He said these infrastructural challenges have dire consequences on the safety, academic progress and success of the colleges and students.

“As much as successive governments over the years have been making some reforms in the colleges of education, there is much more infrastructure to provide to the existing colleges. These include lecture halls, hostels, sports facilities, science laboratories, road network, pipe born water and other useful facilities.”

Mr Dzunu noted that the situation has created a limited number of available facilities in some colleges of education, compelling colleges of education to run a double-track system.

“In this regard, we are urging the government to take pragmatic measures to complete stalled projects as well as partner Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and other benevolent groups to help provide adequate facilities to improve the infrastructure in the colleges of education to enable the colleges to contain all the 4-year group on campus,” Jonathan Dzunu said.

Speaking on Citi FM’s breakfast show, the minister explained that the government was looking at media through which they could generate funds to revamp abandoned projects.

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“I believe bad governance is what will prevent a ruling government to complete a project started by a previous government because if money was the problem, why start a new project? So we are now looking forward to completing all projects former president Mahama started and so we are not beginning any new projects until we complete the old ones,” he said.

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He said the government has assessed the projects to bring closure to enable them to determine how much it will cost to complete the buildings, adding that such projects will not be allowed to go waste.

“We have done what is called quantity surveying; we have come out with bills of quantities as to how much it will cost to complete them,” he revealed.