Dear, Sir.
My name is Stephanie Ofori Prempeh, a third year student of your this noble university, KNUST, the best in West Africa and 14th in Africa. I read BA. Political Studies.
I bring you utmost and warm greeting, full of gratitude for the very good things the University’s administration is serving the entire KNUST community with and those yet undone.
It is clear in the evidence and view that, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has been seeing progress from time to time, especially under the leadership of our current father and Vice Chancellor, Professor Kwesi Obiri Danso. I must commend the leadership of the university and its governing council for the outstanding works on campus and for the school. We yearn for more of such.
As a concerned student, I write to your high office, as the father of all students, to draw your attention to and seek the address of certain problematic issues happening here on campus, crying for the necessary attention. The said issue has to do with the incessant reckless driving on campus and its accompanying deficit of various needs on our roads to regulate driving and students’ safety on campus.
Reckless driving and too much speeding has been highly increased on campus. This is also as a result of the absence (existing ones are broken or faded out) of speed rumps and zebra crossings on the roads on campus; ranging from places like, hall 7 to Conti roundabout, CCB auditorium to the CCB Stairs car park, CCB building to the social sciences faculty offices, Independence hall to unity hall, EHC to GRASAG building, College of Science building to SMS, around the library, the administration among others.
These are evident because, we do not have enough zebra crossing on those stretches of the roads on campus. Those that are even present are neither painted nor have reflectors to prevent occurrences of accidents in the night too.
There is also the issue of inadequate speed rumps on campus to regulate the speed of drivers on campus. I believe that, speed rumps, enough of such, are necessary on campus in our move to making sure students’ lives matter. We should also look at painting the said speed rumps and even put reflectors on them for easy identification in the night.
We shouldn’t wait for such things to aggravate risks on campus, especially severally, before we draw our attention to them. Now is the time for us to consider such issues, as proactive as possible. If care is not taken, not being pessimistic, we might wait to record accidents before planning on solutions to these long existing problems.
Sir, again, the observation of traffic lights’ control on campus has been poor, example is the one at the Agric junction. Drivers tend to decide not to respect the traffic and speed off. Drivers also get too close (not a reasonable meters away from the lights when it’s red), preventing people from passing due to fear of being knocked down by cars when the traffic turns to green. Traffic control in itself at the various places identified as recording top speed movement by vehicle drivers, not enough here on campus. I believe that, if the head of security and transport officers work hand-in-hand to deploy personnel to direct traffic and take care of such possible occurrences of accidents, it would go a long way to help save lives. Currently, the traffic light at the Agric Junction has been broken down by a car due to reckless driving. If the traffic light itself could be knocked down by vehicles like this, what’s the fate of students who use the roads? This is not the first time accidents of such sort are happening on campus.
This calls for immediate attention and solution in order to save lives which we could lose in future if care is not taken.
I plead with your high office to attend to these issues and help provide the necessary remedy to salvage the situation in order to save lives of students and others.
My name is Stephanie Ofori Prempeh, a third year Political Studies Student.
