By Gifty Arthur

It was a moment of grief when officials of Krobo Girls’ Senior High School visited the Burma Camp home of a student, Amanda Owusu Afriyie Kornor, who lost her life through a lorry accident a week ago through a dishonest behaviour of the school’s authorities.

They had taken huge sums of money from over 200 students under the pretext of keeping them on campus, feeding and organizing extra tuition for them to enable them to write the ongoing WASSEC Nov/Dec exams for private candidates, but they later drove them away leading to the untimely death of the 18-year-old while on her way from home to sit for one of her papers.

Six other students of Krobo Girls’ and other passengers, who were also in the car, are currently in various but critical conditions in hospitals scattered in Accra.

The situation again brought to the fore widely-reported carelessness of medical personnel at the 37 Military Hospitals in Accra, as their inaction worsened the girl’s condition and led to her death.

There was drama in the house at the Senior-Non-Commissioned Senior Officers (SNCO) flats at the Air Force Base, when the deceased supposedly possessed her mother and began to speak through her upon seeing the officials of the school, virtually driving away the authorities who had come to the house to express their condolences to the bereaved family.

What was initially thought to be an expression of Mrs. Charity Kornor’s anger at the school’s authorities, rather took a different dimension when she suddenly began to shake violently, and spoke like her daughter and fiercely started questioning why the school’s authorities will take money from her father without honouring their promise of catering for her and her colleagues.

“Why did you take my dad’s money? Why did you take one of the two eggs of my parents” and “why did you break my teeth? “She questioned. It was a frightening experience.

Officials of the school had to flee from the house without uttering a word, into a Toyota Coaster bus they had travelled, before Mrs. Kornor came back to normalcy, she asked what had happened and why she was being held in a very straining posture by her only remaining child, a boy.

This reporter who sat through the brief meeting was later told that Amanda Owusu Afriyie had her teeth and lots of bones badly broken, with her throat also slashed by a sharp object during the accident and as such loss of so much blood.

The scene became more tensed when the father of the deceased, Warrant Officer Eric Kornor, attempted to ask the officials why they drove his daughter away when he had paid for all expenses with respect to the examination.

Before he could ask the pressing question as to why the officials drove all the students from the school premises when they had paid for all the expenses,

Mrs. Kornor who was being restrained by some family members, interrupted again, strongly telling her husband to keep quiet, and tell the officials to leave the room immediately.

In a hurried manner, the officials who came in two buses, all the way from Odumasi-Krobo, had no option but to heed to the advice of the woman to disappear from the house in order to save an already bad situation.

Before the officials left, the girl, through her mother, threatened the officials that they will suffer the same fate that they had made her to suffer.

After Mrs. Kornor regained her consciousness, she asked: “What has happened here?”, as everybody looked on. She then asked her son, the Kornor’s only surviving child:

“Why are you crying”?

The young man, still in tears, did not utter a word. It was rather the family members who told her that it was some of the neighbours who had come to express their condolences.

The whole story began when the authorities of Krobo Girls Senior High School arranged for some of the third-year students of the school to write the November-December (NOVDEC) private examination in the school since the management claimed that they were going to arrange for centers in the area for them.

The authorities requested for GH¢160 per student to cover their use of the school’s facilities, as well as provision of buses, to and fro, the centers of the examination.

In addition, the students paid GH¢150 each as demanded by the authorities to cover extra tuition.

The school’s arrangements for the programme were perfect, considering the inconveniences that the students would go through should they be left to come from their various homes; but this turned into a different story when after the students wrote the Oral English paper, they were asked by the authorities to go home without any reason.

Unfortunately, luck ran out on the side of the authorities when, Amanda, a form three student, went home on Saturday and was returning to the examination center to write the next paper on Monday at Odumasi Krobo, when she was involved in a fatal lorry accident with a Ford Mini Bus with registration number GN143Z at La Bawaleshie, near Oyibi.

Reports say that one other passenger also died in the accident while six other students from the same school sustained serious injuries.

Miss Kornor, according to her father, sadly died at Korle- Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra.

WO Kornor has indicated his intension to drag the school’s authorities to court to explain why they “killed” his only girl.

Her ordeal after the accident was very lamentable.

First, Miss Kornor, together with her other seriously injured passengers, were taken to the Legon Hospital in Accra for medical treatment but after she was given some drips, she, together with her other colleagues, were transferred to the 37 Military Hospital in Accra.

Unfortunately, as has been the attitude of some medical staff in many hospitals lately, (with the 37 Military Hospital being no exception), instead of the officers on duty taking a critical look at the poor girl’s condition before referring her to the nation’s premier Teaching Hospital, Korle-Bu, they just asked that she be taken to Korle-Bu.

The officers in-charge at Korle-Bu could do very little to save Amanda, considering the seriousness of her injuries and also, the great amount of blood she had lost, before reaching Korle-Bu.

Amanda’s school mates who also suffered series of injuries are presently battling with their lives at the 37 Military Hospital and Korle-Bu.

In an effort to get the side of the authorities of the school at the home of Amanda at the Burma Camp, an official of the school who probably has been taken aback by the sad situation, refused to talk.

Meanwhile, WO Kornor has indicated his intention to sue the school’s authorities for breach of contract to serve as a lesson to other institutions which will renege on their side of a contract.