General News of Sunday, 13 October 2019
Source: citinewsroom.com
2019-10-13
Sydney Casley-Hayford is a member of OccupyGhana
Sydney Casley-Hayford, a member of OccupyGhana, does not think anything will come of the University of Ghana’s probe into alleged sexual harassment by two of its lecturers after the BBC Africa Eye ‘Sex for grades’ exposé.
University’s Anti Sexual Harassment Committee’s is set to probe the two lecturers; Professor Ransford Gyampo and Dr Paul Kwame Butakor, over the exposé’s revelations.
On The Big Issue, Mr. Casley-Hayford, however, said: “I am not sure the university can actually fix this because, as usual, what they have done is to set up a lame-duck committee.”
He also remarked that there was no evidence of the committee’s past work bearing any fruit.
To allay any fears, Mr. Casley-Hayford suggested that the committee be more transparent this time around.
“If they want us to believe them and they want us to know they are actually working, then the least they can do is to be transparent and publish it.”
“With the way this particular issue has come out into the public, it would seem to me like just simple common sense [to make the results public]. If you want to put the public’s issues at stake then you have to bring it out into the media and to the attention of the citizens.”
Similar calls have been made by some women students of the University of Ghana in the past.
The Women’s Commission of the school’s Students Representative Council (SRC) proposed that authorities of the school publish on its website and in the dailies, the full details male lecturers who sexually abuse female students.
Currently, the executive body of the University of Ghana SRC has vowed to ensure that lecturers indicted in the sex for grades documentary by the BBC are sanctioned appropriately.
The Anti-Sexual Harassment and Misconduct Committee at the University of Ghana condemned the conduct of the two lecturers seen in the footage.
Both Prof Gyampo and Dr Butakor denied any wrongdoing but have since been suspended pending the investigation.
The suspensions followed similar action against two lecturers in Nigeria who were also filmed by the BBC.
