A Senior Lecturer in Law and Director of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW) for Basic Schools, Alhassan Salifu Bawah is urging government to put in measures in place in order to call students, especially University students, back to school.
He said ever since the President had announced the lockdown measures, students have been staying at home; a situation he said is affecting academic life.
In an interview, Alhassan Salifu Bawah explained that Universities like the UEW was half-way through their academic calendar for the Semester before the President announced the lockdown and the students are Students supposed to carry out online learning as they sit home.
Expressive his views on the online learning system, Alhassan Salifu Bawah said the system has many shortfalls as majority of students the UEW admitted are not Regular students.
Majority of the students too, he indicated have no computers, laptops and smart phones to aid them in the online learning processes hence are completely left out.
“You see, the challenge we have is that most of our students are not admitted as regular students; most of them don’t have laptops or even smart phones so there is not much a lecturer can do because the challenge is that most of these students cannot participate,” he said.
He wonders why we are allowing the Coronavirus pandemic to grind our lives to a halt.
Alhassan Salifu Bawah said, there is the need for government to look at other measures to take in order to move the country forward because the Covid19 pandemic has no time line to leave “so we need to make plans to live with it.”
He stressed that government must find ways of bring students back to school, and enforcing the wearing of masks.
According to him measures such as compulsory wearing of face/nose masks, use of hand sanitizers and frequent washing of hands must be enforced in the universities as the students are called back so that the schools will be able to carry out academic work and admit fresh students for next academic year.
He averred that the virus is being spread and transmitted through coughing when the impurities come from one person to another therefore wearing of Face mask will go a long way to contain the spread of the virus and allow for smooth running of the universities and normal life will go on.
He is of the hope that majority of the students who are currently at home will resume for lecturers should they be called back to school.
Anything short of that he said, will result in the universities having huge backlog of students who will be waiting to enter the universities.
By: PROSPER AGBENYEGA
