General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Thomas Musah has questioned why Ghanaians are condemning authorities of the KNUST Senior High School after a final year student was allegedly neglected for hours leading to his demise.
According to him, it is wrong to ask for the head of someone if the person has not been proven guilty of the act of negligence as is being suggested.
He averred that it will be unfair to condemn the school’s authorities without hearing their side of the story.
Backing his statement with the law, Mr. Musah said, “The fact that we see those things; our legal system talks about the rules of natural justice, and because we talk about the rules of natural justice it means that man must not be condemned until he/she has been given hearing.”
GNAT’s General Secretary asked “What have they done? Have you heard their side of the story?”
KNUST SHS: GNAT blames student’s death on GES’s negligence, systemic failure
According to him, the fact that teachers are seen looking unperturbed doesn’t mean that is what actually happened.
He believes the truth can only be unraveled when Ghanaians hear their side of the story.
“The fact that we see people standing in video that has come out doesn’t mean that the person is guilty. Yes you have seen people standing, what were they doing? So the story behind the videos should be unraveled. We should be able to appreciate the stories behind the video. The story behind the video should be that every teacher should be given the hearing,” he said.
He further accused the Ghana Education Service (GES) of being the cause of the student’s death stating that had the education service provided health professionals to the schools as earlier promised, the boy would have been alive.
He therefore called on GES to “take full responsibility of this failure because if the health providers were to be around, this thing will never happen. Therefore to say that the teachers were standing there and visit the iniquities of some people onto the teachers as a justification for somebody’s negligence to go unnoticed, that will not happen.”