Doughlas Haruna Yakubu, the headmaster of the Ghana Senior High School (GHANASCO), called the viral video showing some students allegedly sleeping in toilet cubicles “mischievous” and “a deliberate misrepresentation of facts.”
Mr. Yakubu thinks the journalist staged and dramatized the viral videos to harm the school’s reputation.
He continued by saying that the school has enough room to accommodate more students and does not need to convert restrooms into dorms for them.
“That facility has been there for so many years, it has never been a dormitory or a storage room, it is a store more or less. In the 60s when Kwame Nkrumah built the rooms, they were washrooms, and so they still have the design of washrooms, but the facility has not been modernised, so they are just small, small cubicles and that is where we keep our chop boxes when students are travelling,” Mr Yakubu told Citi Breakfast Show host Bernard Avle.
The headmaster added “They are never sleeping places…these materials that you see might have been taken from the dormitory for him [journalist] to cover his videos and leave. Those cubicles are so tiny and so hot that students cannot live in them. We have enough space, so this is not fair.”
He disclosed that there are six restrooms at the school to accommodate all of the male students.
On Sunday, the Ghana Education Service opened an investigation into a viral video that showed students sleeping in toilet cubicles.
Social media users were outraged by the video, which also raised questions about the students’ safety and wellbeing under the free SHS policy.
Even though the school has enough space to accommodate an additional 300 students, some students are still made to sleep in such appalling conditions, according to the Ghana Education Service.
The investigation is anticipated to be finished in two weeks, and the Senior Housemaster and Headmaster will be required to provide a report on the results.
The management expressed their commitment to making sure that students are given a safe learning environment in a statement that was made public, and they assured all stakeholders and the general public that they would continue to place a high priority on the safety and well-being of their students.
