According to WAEC, the cases, which span from 2020 through to this year, are part of a total of an initial 13 cases, three of which have been dealt with.

The Head of Legal of WAEC, Rev. Victor Brew, said this at a press conference during an update by the council on the 2022 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for School Candidates.

Court

He said there were also three cases in Accra alone that were ready for court and “we are waiting for the divisional crime officer to give the go ahead for the prosecution.

“We have some three cases with the Cyber Crimes Unit of the Ghana Police Service, which are yet to start with respect to their prosecution.

“So I can tell you that in all, 13 cases have come up and I can say three of them have been dealt with while 10 are either at various stages of investigations or the police getting ready for prosecution,” he said.

Investigations

Rev. Brew said although there would be cases that would be reported, they had to be investigated and after investigations, such cases might not go to court.

“This is how it works, the media may pick up information that there is an incident here and those may be allegations. Now, after the allegations come up to us, we would then have to investigate, the police would do their job,” he explained.

The WAEC Legal Officer said in two of the cases, the culprits were convicted and fined and in one case in the Bono Region, the court did not think that there was enough evidence to support the charge, while the rest were either with the police investigating or about to go to court.

Security measures

At a recent press briefing, WAEC said it had put security measures in place to ensure the sanctity of the ongoing WASSCE, whose written papers began in the country last Monday.

The measures include the serialisation of examination questions, collaboration with the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) to monitor the printing of question papers and the use of number combination padlocks, in addition to ordinary padlocks, for all security bags containing question paper packets.

Others are working closely with some security agencies to track and arrest dealers and operators of rogue websites, the inspection of all depots nationwide and fortification of those that needed to be fortified, ensuring uninterrupted movement of question papers from strong rooms to depots and the creation of additional depots located close to schools to ensure that question papers do not arrive late and are released to candidates early.

Rest

The rest of the measures are issuing of question papers not earlier than 45 minutes before the start of each paper and enhanced inspection of malpractice-prone centres, naming and shaming of schools that engage in malpractice to serve as a deterrent to others, as well as correspondence to the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service regarding reports received from concerned citizens about the collection of money and plans by certain schools to cheat.

Moreover, there will be continued surveillance of these schools by the council's team of inspectors and security persons in the course of the examination.