Police have dispersed graduates of the School of Hygiene who were picketing the premises of the Ministry of Sanitation over unpaid allowances. The students, however, say they will return to the ministry, and are threatening to use whatever means to have their demands met.
The students stormed the ministry at 3am yesterday and threatened not to leave until their demands were met. They maintained that the government had not treated them fairly by failing to pay them their allowance for many months.
However, the police arrived at the scene to intervene, forcing the demonstrating students to vacate the premises, albeit with a little force.
Trainees at the School of Hygiene are due GHC400 each for the three years they were in school but their payments have not been forthcoming from the government.
No demos in COVID season
Some of the students accused the police of using brute force to evict them from the premises of the Sanitation Ministry.
“The police started beating us after the chief director asked them to move us from the ministry,” one of the agitating students told a Citi News reporter.
“They are just beating us mercilessly. Is that how we live in this country just because we are demanding what is due us? They just call the police to beat us up.”
However, the director of operations with the Accra Regional Police Command, ACP Kofi Boakye, said non-lethal weapons were used to disperse the students.
He explained that demonstrations are not allowed to take place because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“In this COVID-19 season, demonstrations and protests are not allowed under the Executive Instrument. And here we are: they came up in their numbers, threatening and massing up and it will be wrong if the police allow them to sleep here,” ACP Boakye said.
“We used a soft-hand approach talking to them to leave, but some insisted that they will cause distractions at the ministry and, being protectors of state and individuals, we will not sit down for this gross violation.
“Therefore, we brought [non-armed] police personnel to use non-lethal equipment to drive them out and we have succeeded in doing that. Under my watch, no one was tortured.”
Accumulated allowances
The students say they have not received their allowance for the past three years.
According to the group, as things stand, each student is owed an accumulated sum of GHC12,000, contrary to the ministry’s claim that it owes the student just under GHC9.1 million in total.
“They want to form a committee and they want us to be part of the committee to speed up the process to pay the money. But we have been hearing this story for years,” the leader of the group said.
“The Ministry of Sanitation has failed to pay the allowances. The president promised to give us preferential treatment by transferring us from the Ministry of Health to the Ministry of Sanitation but three years down the line, the ministry has failed to restore the School of Hygiene allowances.
“We are here for our allowance and we are not leaving until we get our money. We are going to sleep there. Even if it takes a month, we will be here,” another student said.
E A Alanore
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