At a glance of the two major entrances amongst many porous entry points depicts volume of how insured the students are whilst on campus.
A recent visit conducted by this reporter to the College campus situated behind the Chinese Teaching Hospital at Jui, flanked on the other end by the Kossoh Town village – east end of Freetown unearthed the deplorable and porous nature of the campus, especially its internal roads which are not good for a country’s only medical college.
In seeking the views of students, the visible poor and mud-covered campus roads, lack of pipe borne water supply, insecure campus entrances due to lack of perimeter fence, nuisance from encroachers and inadequate infrastructure amongst many others challenges where among the dozens of issues students are grappling with on campus.
“We often queue to fetch water from a single bore whole and sometimes we are caused to go out of campus covering miles to fetch water when the facility is not available on campus. Often, our studies are rudely interrupted by laud acts of nuisances caused by encroachers who have built dwelling houses on the campus land’’ said a concern Medical Two student.
The College’s Warden of Students, Clifford Rotimie Roberts affirmed that COMAHS campus infrastructural facilities are limited since its establishment in 1988. “The COMAHS campus is challenged with limited lecture rooms, hostel accommodation, lack pipe borne water supply and as thus students only depend on a single bore hole that is fitted with a hand pump which breaks down often, lack of transportation facilities, inadequate laboratory and library facilities and above all, the campus is exposed to the risk of uncontrolled movements of passers-by and plying of vehicles and other motorists indiscriminately across the campus’’ the Warden of Students added.
The question as to whether the COMAHS administration in any way bothered or concern by these limiting factors to the operations and enabling learning environment has been the concern of many students of the College.
Responding to this question when asked by this reporter, Deputy Registrar of College, Winton Webber said for far too long, the Medical School campus has been grappling with issues ranging from the construction of a perimeter fence which has led to massive encroachment of the pieces of land property of the college to provision of basic facilities on campus.
He said the College has already put forward a proposal to the World Health Organization and the Government of Sierra Leone relating to these issues.
