The Ghana Education Service (GES) has indicated it will need time to establish the exact “form of sexual harassment” against ten basic school pupils by three teachers.
“There are different forms of sexual harassment so we need to know that. Once we get the report, we will institute another investigation from the Girls’ Education office…. then appropriate punishment will be meted out,” the Deputy Director of the GES, Stephen Adu explained.
Three male teachers sexually assaulted ten girls at the Ho Airfield school.
[contextly_sidebar id=”EcNarosUqJxYOwWzb6bBRdIVwU2CwDS6″]Mr. Adu further said that not every sexual relation between teachers and pupils should be regarded as sexual harassment or treated as a Police case.
“Sexual harrasment are in different forms and we need to establish what kind of sexual harassment because even if a male teacher touches a female person without any intercourse it cannot be considered as sexual harassment depending on the approach.”
Meanwhile a legal practitioner, Nana Frema Busia has condemned the GES’ punishment tools such as transfers and demotions for culpable teachers.
In an interview on the Citi Breakfast Show, Nana Frema said those measures are not enough to deter other culprits.
“I think they should report such crimes no matter how small it is to the Police. Dealing with it only at that [GES] level in my opinion, only serves to exacerbates the problem … What is a transfer, you transfer and that is a disciplinary action? It does not make sense,” she argued.
Stephen Adu explained on the Citi Breakfast Show that the Service needs to determine the “form of sexual harassment” the girls were subjected to before meting out disciplinary actions to the perpetrators.
“We have two types of transfers within our system. If it is established that they have been sexually assaulted, there are so many punishments that go with it. First of all we can transfer, that is public transfer. We can also demote the person. If he is on a particular rank, he will be demoted to a lower rank,” Mr. Adu explained.
He was however quick to add that the GES normally hands over such cases to the Police.
He further pointed out that the GES in most cases arrogates to itself, power to investigate these cases and subsequently hands out the necessary punishment to the perpetrators.
“When there is a case of this nature and it is determined what type of sexual harassment, it is there that we decide which punishment that we really have to give.”
Similar cases in the past have only seen the culprits being transfered to other parts of the country as punishment without any criminal punishment.
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By: Marian Efe Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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