The Minority in Parliament has claimed that government is threatening school heads with dismissals if they publicly complain about the challenges confronting its flagship education program – Free SHS.
The minority argues that the government has deceived Ghanaians by exempting second and third-year students from the scholarship program which begins today.
Addressing the media in Accra over the chaos that appears to have engulfed the program, the Minority leader Haruna Iddrisu raised concerns over the recentralisation of procurement with regards to the program.
Mr. Iddrisu said about 560,000 students will not benefit from the program because of the problems that have greeted it, Starr News’ Kwaku Obeng Adjei who is at the press conference reported Monday.
” We have also learnt with trepidation that procurement of virtually all SHS-related items has now been centralized in the Ministry of Education. This is not only a show of lack of confidence in our hardworking Headmasters and Headmistresses; it is also a major stab in the back of the nations decentralization programme directed by the Constitution under which enterprise-based activities such as procurement are to be undertaken at the enterprise level; in this case at the SHS level by those who are actually running the institutions.
“We also note that centralized procurement can be an avenue for shameless cronyism. Already, our monitoring revels that the selection of caterers for the one-hot-meal a day component which was also centralized has been shrouded in secrecy as heads of schools are only receiving calls from District Chief Executives (DCEs) about which caterers have been assigned to their schools. Sadly, the stage has been set for NPP apparatchiks to invade our senior high schools as cooks. We still have fresh memories of how a similar approach with the School Feeding Programme at the basic level led to the serving of substandard maggot infested food, mass hospitalization of pupils which all culminated in the Dutch Government pulling out from its sponsorship of the programme.
“CHASS has also noted with deep concern how several promises made to them by Government that releases for the Progressively Free SHS will get to them 2 weeks before schools re-open have not been kept. Several other deadlines have been missed. Like many other Ghanaians, CHASS has had to learn through the hard way that promises from this Government are not made to be kept”.
The free SHS policy, to cost 3.6 billion Ghana cedis each year, was a major campaign promise by then candidate Nana Akufo Addo in both the 2012 and 2016 elections.
A little over 400,00 students are expected to benefit from the policy that will exempt them from paying for tuition and other fees.
President Akufo-Addo will officially launch the policy at the West African Senior High School at Adenta tomorrow, September 12,2017.
