Technical Lead at the Bureau of Public Safety, Sampson Wolanyo Deklu in an interview with Johnnie Hughes on the 3FM Sunrise Morning Show has called for stricter punishment to be applied to officials of local assemblies whose negligence caused the collapse of the dining hall of Ejuraman Anglican Secondary School in the Ejura Sekyedumase Municipal District of Ashanti Region.
Forty-nine students of Ejuraman Anglican SHS were hospitalized at Ejura Government Hospital after the dining hall of their school collapsed on them after a downpour on Monday night. According to reports, the structure has been in a deplorable state for a while but all attempts to get the local authorities to have the dilapidated dining hall reconstructed have proved futile.
“We have been complaining about the deplorable state of this building but nothing has been done to address our concern. How would the government feel if we had died from this disaster?” the students lamented to 3FM’s reporter.
Sampson Deklu, asserts that the works departments of the various local assemblies are not able to do a proper assessments of buildings from time to time in order to ascertain their safety and integrity.
“I don’t think these are done, we don’t really do them right even from when the building permit is issued. Everyone is left to do what they want to do. No assessment is done even after the building on the usage of the building. That is why we keep on getting these issues to happen time after time” he opined
He stated that the collapse of buildings will persist until authorities live up to expectations and do what is expected from them. “Once they happen we just talk about them for a while and we all go back to sleep again and nothing happens until there is another disaster. In most of these cases, there are casualties, people lose their lives. People who sleep on their jobs should be reprimanded. We will keep advocating but those our taxes are paying to ensure that the right things are done are not showing results” Mr. Deklu mentioned
He further explained that for a structure to be safe, it takes an expert to establish that hence the assemblies should really be responsible to ensure that children are educated in safe school structures. Supervision and standard enforcement should be adhered to at all levels of construction.
According to the Technical Lead for the Bureau of Public Safety, punishing people for not performing their duties to ensure the integrity of buildings and ensuring the safety of the public will serve as a deterrent to others who will occupy such positions in the future..
He underscored the need for the government of Ghana to adequately resource the local assemblies to help them discharge their mandate efficiently.
By Samuel Afriyie Owusu|3news.com|Ghana
