By Nicholas Osei-Wusu
The management of Akrokeri College of Education in the Ashanti Region has been compelled, due to inadequate on-campus residential facilities, to convert the College’s clinic, E-Learning and ICT Centre, and the kitchen of the only available female hostel into temporary accommodation for female students who were stranded upon their return to school.
During a visit to the school by Correspondent Nicholas Osei-Wusu, the level of congestion was evident. The only female residential facility was housing 402 students; far exceeding its original bed capacity of 157 with every available space in the rooms and corridors being used either as a sleeping area or for storing luggage.
In addition to the unbearable heat, the roofs leak badly, leaving occupants anxious whenever it rains at night.
The severe overcrowding has also compelled authorities to convert the hostel’s kitchen into an accommodation annex.
Madam Mary Andoh, the House Coordinator, shared with GBC the challenges arising from the overcrowded conditions.
“We have so many challenges here. when it rains, you can’t step here, the roof leaks badly. This room should hold 15 students but now we are 60. Every week, some of them fall sick”, she lamented.
Similarly, the consulting rooms, dispensary, wards, and Outpatient Department (OPD) at the school’s clinic are no longer functioning as treatment facilities to address the health complications arising from the congestion and other causes. Instead, the clinic has been turned into yet another makeshift accommodation facility, forcing sick students to travel to the Akrokeri township for medical care. To worsen the situation, the clinic’s roof also leaks badly.
As if that were not enough, the College’s E-Learning and ICT Centres have also been repurposed to help ease the congestion. Even with these improvised arrangements, beds are sometimes moved out to create additional space for students. They are compelled to walk some distance, day or night, to attend to nature’s call, raising serious safety and security concerns.
Kezia Opoku, the Women’s Commissioner of the SRC, expressed frustration over the situation.
“You see the building over here, we don’t have washroom. We have to cross the road to different hall of residence to use the washroom. We’re ladies and we wear clothes that are revealing and the guys will be passing through. This is the library some of the male teachers also use it. It’s very bad in day time and night. It’s not convenient at all”, the Women Commissioner bemoaned.
As another interim measure, the management has renovated and converted the school’s Resource Centre for practical training sessions into another holding centre.
At the time of the visit, the school’s authorities were allocating spaces in it for some of the remaining students. Interestingly, as the struggle continued, more of the female students kept arriving from home to compound the congestion situation.
The Students’ Affairs Officer of the College, Reverend Father Angelo Elijah Opoku, said overcrowding has become an albatross for the management.
Rev. Fr Opoku said, “As we speak now, we have no clinic. We have no means of helping them with First Aid or any other health-related issues. So it is a big challenge.”
For the Principal, Professor Aboagye DaCosta, though barely four months in office, has shown commitment to addressing those challenges within the capability of the management including renovating the Resource Centre.
He passionately appealed to the Ministry of Education to intervene for the Contractor to handover of the three-storey girls’ hostel and boys’ accommodation to help mitigate the overcrowding.
“If everybody is to report, then it means that we will have to create more spacs, including the use, unfortunately, of classrooms. We’re appealing to the Contractor and the Consultant of the girls’ hostel project to complete it as soon as possible. It’s about 238-bed capacity hostel and once it is completed and handed over to us, we can move all those in the clinic, the E-Learning Centre, there. But it’s about 98% complete”, the Principal appealed
Within the last four months, the College has used its own meagre resources to fix the water challenges and internal security to ease the agitation of the students.
Meanwhile, the College’s Students’ Representatives Council, SRC has formally notified the management that the students can no longer endure the congestion problem and therefore urge Management to ensure the completion and handing over of the new hostel project or they would forcibly occupy it.
Established in 1962 as one of the educational legacies of Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame, the Akrokeri College of Education, commonly called AKROTCOE or ‘Adansi University’, has become a College of choice for both male and female aspiring professional teachers as a result of its prestigious status as the only institution of higher learning in the southern part of Ashanti, coupled with enviable quality training of professional teachers for the country.
Within the 64-year period, student population in the Science-biased College has increased from the initial 30 to 1,626 while the male domination status dramatically shifted to a ratio of 60:40 in favour of the women student currently.
Incidentally, the College’s student residential accommodation situation has stuck at the Owusu Sampah House as the only original residence for the ever increasing female teacher trainees.
About three years ago, the College’s admission policy drastically shifted in favour of women following an assurance by GETFund to the management that, a 238-bed females hostel would be available within two years. The failure of this promise is what is said to have compounded the overcrowding in the female Hostel.
Even though the situation at the males’ hostel is not as serious as that of the women, they are also faced with leaking, no bed syndrome and sanitation problems with no social life after lectures as their JCR remains out of use. A new Hostel building to give them hope has also stalled at the foundation level. The SRC President, Edmund Nyamekye, could also not hide his frustrations about the myriad of problems with accommodation on campus.
