Members of the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) of Achimota School have resolved to embark on a peaceful demonstration to protest against the danger and the health threat the school's community has been exposed to. During the demonstration, they are expected to present a petition to the President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, over the matter. This was the outcome of an emergency meeting attended by 800 members of the PTA. The meeting was held to discuss the specter of a close down. "The petition will ask the Government to treat the situation with the utmost urgency, bearing in mind the strong probability of the outbreak of an epidemic at the school and its surrounding communities," they said in a letter to the Editor of the Daily Graphic. The PTA expressed concern that the students spent valuable class time cleaning up the mess caused by the spillage of sewerage into gutters and onto the compound. "The possible threats to the health of the students cannot be overlooked, especially as the Achimota Hospital (originally Achimota School Hospital) also served by the same sewerage system. The PTA also expressed great apprehension at the real possibility of an explosion of the whole sewerage system, as the build-up of gases normally present in treatment plants of this nature now have no exit. The letter said the news that some of the boarding houses had started experiencing "flush back" of sewerage in their bathrooms added to the near panic situation, explaining that the PTA feared that the imminent closure of the school would interfere with the students' right to uninterrupted education, a right assured by the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana. The PTA, the letter said, therefore, called on all stakeholders and indeed all Ghanaians to join them in their quest for a speedy correction of such potentially dangerous situation. It said the meeting was called following a news report in the January 19, 2010 issue of the Daily Graphic that the Accra Metropolitan Authority (AMA) had ordered the immediate closure of Achimota School, warning that the continued spillage of waste from the school's sewerage system posed a health danger to the students. It said a letter to that effect, signed by Mr Jerry Thompson Amo of the Public Health Department of the AMA, had been delivered to the Headmistress of the school, Mrs Beatrice Adorn, after health inspectors had found the situation on campus "too dangerous to the health of the students". Government health inspectors ordered the school to resolve the problem or shut down. Source: Daily Graphic/Ghana