The headmistress of Achimota Senior High School, Madam Beatrice Tsotso Adom, has called on the regional police to assist in dealing with individuals who continuously encroach on the school lands.
According to her, some of the encroachers had been using armed land guards to seal off the area while they build.
Some churches have also taken part of their lands for exorcism exercises thus, making it quite impossible for the teachers and the students to be in their bungalows and dormitories respectively and rest or learn.
She said the increasing spate of encroachment on the school lands had led to the discovery of several dead bodies on the compound.
Some of the teachers and the students, according to Madam Tsotso Adom, are often attacked by some of these encroachers.
“We all know that Achimota School is a public institution with the school population increasing every academic year; and if the issue of encroachment is not settled there will come a time when there would be no land for future development for the school,” Ms Tsotso Adom noted.
She said, “Anytime we report to the police about the activities of these encroachers, they tell us to go to court, without doing anything about it.”
She expressed these concerns when the Accra Regional Police Commander, COP Dr George Akuffu Dampare, called on the school authorities as part of his community police engagement module.
Under this module, the regional commander will once in a month spend the whole day to interact with opinion leaders in society to find out some of their security concerns while sharing with them some of the security strategies of the command.
Madam Adom continued, “Within this academic year alone, we have recorded about five murder cases on the school compound and the latest one is the discovery of an unidentified body lying in the bush.
The body as we speak, is still lying in the bush decomposing, even though the police have been informed.”
She urged the police to patrol the area for since the population of the school was increasing every academic year.
Madam Adom indicated that even though the school authorities had taken the encroachers to court, they expected the police to do something to protect the rest of the land before things got out of hand.
COP Dr Dampare assured the staff of the school of police protection.
Touching on the five murder cases, the school authorities claimed had been reported, the regional commander debunked that claim, stating that for the past two years, six death cases had been recorded on the compound, some being suicide.
Concerning the body which was recently discovered on the school compound, the regional commander stated that the police received information of the discovery of the body on Monday and when personnel visited the scene, the body was in a complete state of decomposition.
“The body was so bad that the police could not even determine the gender of the deceased person and could also not move the body and so a corona report has been obtained for a pathologist to examine the body before it can be moved to a place of burial,” he pointed out.
As part of the visit, the regional commander also met with chiefs and opinion leader of Achimota Kissiman and Christian Village.
Togbe Annang Agboba, chief of Achimota Christian Village, also lamented the fact that activities of encroachers of the school lands were very worrying.
He said, the churches that perform exorcism in the Achimota forest often leave their victims, who are mostly mentally deranged, moving about on the school compound.
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