Dzolo-Gborgame youths harass teachers out of town

Dzolo-Gborgame, June 12, GNA - All the 29 teachers of the Dzolo-Gborgame E. P. Basic School Complex in the Ho Municipal Area have fled the town as a result of threats on their lives. The teachers were accused of helping to arrest an alleged rape suspect. The suspect, whose name is being withheld by the Anyirawase Police, was said to have forced his way into the room of a female teacher and at knife point attempted raping her guest who was undertaking the National Identification Registration Exercise in the town. In the process the victim, whose name is also being withheld, sustained a deep cut in her left palm.

Mr Stephen Kofi Ahiatafu, Anyirawase District Police Commander, told the Ghana News Agency on Thursday that on June 4 the lady was alone in the house when a masked attacker entered demanding money. He said as she fidgeted, searching through her bag, the attacker shouted at her for playing tricks and ordered her into the bedroom. Mr Ahiatafu said the attacker demanded sex in exchange for the money and proceeded to cut victim's jeans trousers with the knife and then removed her pants.

He said on taking a closer look at her, the attacker asked if she was indeed the teacher who lived there. Mr Ahiatafu said when the victim told the attacker that she was only a guest of the teacher her attacker apologized, saying he was pursuing the teacher and not the victim. Mr Ahiatafu said the police were investigating the veracity of the claim by the suspect that the blood stained shirt found in his room belonged to a room mate who is on the run. He said the suspect would, however, have to explain how he came to be putting on a blood stained underwear identified by the victim as the type worn by the attacker. When the GNA got to Dzolo-Gborgame at around noon on Thursday, all doors to the classrooms were closed and there was no activity on the compound.

The GNA traced Mr Emmanuel Amegboe one of the teachers to the Anyirawase District Police Station, some 30 kilometres away, where he was then writing a statement. Mr Amegboe said the school had been under siege from some unruly youths of the town for sometime now, who use the school compound as a rendezvous in the night.

Mr Amegboe said over the past three years there had been repeated cases of teachers and pupils reporting to school to find gobs of human excreta in the classrooms, compelling the teachers to prompt the Ho Municipal Directorate of Education to do something about the situation or they would abandon post.

He said defecating in classrooms became rampant in the past three weeks particularly in the classrooms of Miss Regina Dzamposu, host of the victim of the attempted rape, Mr Amegboe and Mr Vincent Agrah. Mr Amegboe said walls of the school's KVIP toilet had lately been plastered with graffiti directed at Miss Dzamposu. Mr Amegboe who helped apprehend the suspect in the rape attempt said he was attacked and nearly lynched but for a driver who drove between him and his attackers. Mr Amegboe who said his mother hailed from the town claimed that the past six days had been hell for the teachers as some youths, brandishing cutlasses, had been shouting threats at the teachers. Mr Amegboe, who is also the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) Circuit Secretary, said teachers were not returning to school until their security was ensured. He said many of them, he believed, would not have the guts to remain in the town and might have to be transferred.