SHS Students Turn Phone Dealers

Mobile phone racketeering among Senior High School (SHS) students has become rampant in the Ashanti Region, particularly the central business district of the Kumasi metropolis. Unknown to their school authorities, the students go about that nefarious activity with cheeky ease on most of the pavements in the business hub of Kumasi, while some KMA officials, specifically the metropolitan guards and decongestion taskforce, look on helplessly. Several reports made to the KMA decongestion taskforce seemed to have fallen on deaf ears since no action has been taken to that effect and the exercise continues unabated. An example is the pavement in front of the PZ watch sellers and also leads to the Kejetia lorry terminal, which is fast becoming a safe haven for that illicit trade. Pedestrians are always mobbed by the students on the pavements as one of the strategies employed for marketing their mobile phones. The irony of the situation is that some of the phones sold to those who patronize them most of the times turn out to be worn-out materials which they term in the local parlance as, “Bomb.” For fear of being caught in the act, such students are always seen clad in their respective school vests and sometimes in the Friday wear, working in concert with some hoodlums. Instead of directing attention to their academic exercises, those students shun normal studying timetables and are usually found on the pavement, selling mobile phones from Monday to Saturday. Last Tuesday, the timely intervention by some petty traders and hawkers in front of the Kejetia branch of National Investment Bank (NIB) saved a student in an Osei Tutu Senior High School uniform from being lynched by an angry mob for allegedly stealing a mobile phone. A Toase Senior High School student in the school’s vest was also spotted at the PZ area on Friday, last week busily marketing some mobile phones. Asked why school was in session but he was on the streets selling mobile phones, the Toase teenager declined to offer any meaningful answer by just saying that he is a businessman. Meanwhile, some of the senior high school teachers interviewed by The Enquirer newspaper have stated categorically that the current development is something they were not privy to, saying “Once it has come to our notice available and requisite measures would be put in place to nip the act in the bud.”