Police have been deployed to the University of Ghana(UG) campus to prevent continuing students from entering their previous halls of residence.
Students of the school are trooping into the campus today, January 12, 2023, the first day of reopening for the new academic year.
However, they arrived on campus to see a heavy security presence, preventing them from accessing the various halls.
This has led some students stranded.
“We came here and the school’s security said they will not allow us to enter the halls, and the police are assisting them to do that,” one of the frustrated continuing students said.
The security presence follows a new residential policy by the management of the university which directed the continuing students to seek accommodation outside the campus.
This decision was an intervention to prevent the recurrence of violent clashes between students of Commonwealth Hall and Mensah Sarbah Hall.
Students and alumni of the Commonwealth and Mensah Sarbah halls have however expressed their displeasure about the university’s decision to eject continuing students from the two halls.
Some students of the Commonwealth hall secured an interlocutory injunction on January 6, 2023, restraining the management of UG from implementing the policy.
However, the management of UG argued that it implemented the decision before the injunction was secured.
In a statement on January 11, 2023, the university said it has instructed its lawyers to vigorously fight the injunction, arguing that it was secured on inaccurate information by the supposed students.
They also added that about 83 percent of students who will not be allowed back into the halls have agreed to find accommodation outside.
But some students have refuted the claims.
“That is not the truth, the reason is that the way they brought about the whole thing was like a threat. They said you accept or reject to become a non-resident. They pushed the whole thing to our throat, we were left with no choice. We want the whole world to know that the UG management is flouting the laws of Ghana.
“If it’s contempt of court it’s not for me to say, the court will prove itself in the coming days. The injunction says let the status quo remain, what management is doing so bad, the whole world and everybody must come against it,” one student said.