The West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) has refuted claims that the government is indebted to the examining body.
This follows claims by the Minority in Parliament that WAEC is unable to mark scripts of candidates of this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination and grade the pupils due to that indebtedness.
The Minority urged the government to urgently pay WAEC to enable it to carry out its function of grading the students.
However, speaking to Starr News, the Director of Public Affairs at the West Africa Examination Council John Kapi revealed that post-examination activities are on course.
“As far as WAEC is concerned post post-examination activities are ongoing. We have been able to finish with the control of the script, able to ascertain the number that has written the examination, and start to swap the scripts to various marking venues when marking will take place. We are on course as far as the post-examination activities are concerned.”
“We have not halted any activity. We are still working on the post-examination activities. Now the problem has been with the time elapsed between the conclusion of the BECE and the commencement of the WASSCE. It is the same personnel who are working on both examinations. So we are doing some of the activities on skeletal basis and running the WASSCE in full-time. When we are done with the WASSCE we will continue with the marking of the BECE”, he added.
But Member of Parliament for Builsa South and Deputy Ranking member on the Education Committee in Parliament Dr. Clement Apaak insists the government is unable to release funds to the exam body to mark scripts of BECE candidates from this month to September.
“WAEC obviously can speak publicly like this but the government still owes WAEC. The Government owes WAEC because the government has failed to meet its obligations as far as the fees for the students who wrote the exams are concerned. We know it is through those monies that WAEC is able to undertake its post-exams activities including marking and bringing examiners together to compile and organize the results for onward processing and publication.
“So we know what we are talking about. WAEC is owed by the government and that is a fact WAEC is also having challenges in paying its examiners and invigilators. Well, we have put the information that we have in the public domain, if WAEC says it has no problem, we wait to see.”
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM/Benjamin Sackey
