The Management of the University of Ghana says its new residential policy is to help minimise the accommodation challenges faced by new entrants every year.

The new residential policy revoked the residential status of continuing students in both Commonwealth and Mensah Sarbah Halls.

According to the University, the two halls were part of a piloting exercise for its plan to reserve traditional halls for freshers.

In an interview with JoyNews on Friday, the Head of the Department of Communication, Dr Abena Animwaa Yeboah Banin explained that in the next three years, all traditional halls will be reserved for level 100 students.

“It’s actually a progressive policy. This year, we are only piloting it with Sarbah Hall and Commonwealth Hall. Progressively, up to 2025, the plan is to make all the traditional halls, Mensah Sarbah, Legon Hall, Akuafo Hall, Commonwealth Hall, Volta Hall - all these five traditional halls of the University will be reserved for only Level 100 admissions,” she said.

She said the decision to reserve the halls for freshers was because the school had noticed they often fell victim to fraudsters.

“It helps us address that perennial problem that we have every year as fresh students come in, they come stranded, they do not have accommodation, they do not know what to do.

“They do not know the system and so they become susceptible to scammers who are all over the place and trying to dupe unsuspecting students and parents,” she added.

Dr Banin further said the school decided to begin the piloting with Mensah Sarbah and Commonwealth to end the recurring clashes between the halls.

“In terms of whether it is enough to address the clashes that were occurring on campus, we think it would do some,” she said.

On February 14, some aggrieved students clashed with Police at the forecourt of the Commonwealth Hall as they tried to access the facility.

The former residents of the hall were protesting what they see as management’s silence on the accommodation crisis.

Their agitation led to a stand-off with the Police who had been deployed to prevent them from making their way into the Commonwealth Hall.

One of them says a private hostel that he was assigned due to the directive requires that he pays GHC4,000, which is unaffordable.

“I am one of the people who couldn’t pay… as we speak today, we have been sacked from those halls,” he told JoyNews.

This, the Head of the Communication Department of the University said is because the students had not made payments by the February 10 deadline.

“Let me take the opportunity and emphasize that no legitimate student of Commonwealth and male students of Sarbah who was moved from these two sides were denied accommodation. All of them were placed.

“If today they are struggling to get that room, it is because they have gone to occupy the space by the deadline, we gave them to pay the fees for the room, 10^th February they had not done that and so then the University needs money to run,” she said.