The National Union of Ghana Students(NUGS) has protested against the government’s plan to cap the Ghana Education Trust Fund(GETFund).
This comes after the Finance Ministry hinted intention of implementing a GETFund formula for the year which will see 39% of GETFund levy allocated with the remaining 61% diverted to other areas.
President of NUGS Dennis Appiah Larbi Ampofo led some executives and members of the Union to protest the intended move by picketing at the entrance of Parliament House on Thursday.
In an interview with Starr News, he condemned the government’s declining expenditure on education, questioning why there’s a consistent attempt by government to decline investment in education.
“Now, you ask yourself, what about the statutory funds which are allocated to education? If you are going to take away the one you have discretion over, how do you take away the one which is statutory? That is where the problem really is. If you look at the data at GETFund you realize that the entirety of GETFund I will say is in chains. A fund is supposed to work with requisite resources, if you take away resources from the fund the fund ceases to be useful to the people. You take monies from the people in the form of taxes with the promise that you are going to use it to fund education, the moment you don’t do that you’ve reneged on your social contract with the people and that’s what NUGS finds problematic in this situation.”
The NUGS President added: “I refer you to what is going to happen this year which we have said might be one of the worst funding years for education. There’s a decline in government allocation for education, now look at GETFund, out of the 4.6 billion that is supposed to accrue to GETFund, the capping regime will only allocate 1.8 billion (39%). So, I ask the simple question, even God takes 10%, so if you want to take from educational sector you don’t take 61% that is very dangerous.”
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM