University roads brouhaha: Legon to bus pupils

Head of Public Affairs at the University of Ghana, Mrs Stella Amoah says making the university a thoroughfare would amount to turning the institute into “Abeka Lapaz”.

According to her, but for the construction of the N1 Highway and the Shiashie-Aburi roads, the university had always been restricted to the general public.

“This is something that we had in the past and when the N1 as well as the Aburi roads were being constructed we opened up access to everybody. Now, the N1 is completed… we have provided land between us and GIMPA as a boundary road which anybody can use to get to the city,” she said on Peace FM, Tuesday.

She maintained that although the university was a public institution, its roads could not be used as a thoroughfare.

“We want to deter people who have no legitimate business to do in Legon from using our roads as a public thorough fare … and the university as defined by law reserves the right to give permission to whom to access our roads… We want to have a conducive environment to carry out academic work.

“Just as in our secondary schools, we do not use our second cycle institutions as thorough fare, this is the University of Ghana, it has over 40,000 students, we are really getting close to an Abeka Lapaz if we use the University of Ghana as a public thoroughfare,” she said.

Arrangements for University Primary students
On Monday, angry parents of pupils and students of the University Primary and Junior High School blocked the west gate link of the University of Ghana in protest of the university’s decision http://graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/19589-angry-parents-block-legon-gate.html to restrict the general public from using its roads as a thoroughfare.

Condemning the action of the parents, Mrs Amoah said, “I don’t think it is proper to protest in the way that some of them were protesting.”

She maintained that parents would not be allowed to enter the university unless they had the 2014 UG sticker.

She said, however, that the university was making provision for students to be transported from the gate to the school and vice versa.

“We will appeal to them that we have not left their children without any assistance. On a daily basis, we are providing a means of transport from the gate to their school and we will do that also when they close from school,” she said.