Lee Ocran
NANA AKUFO-ADDO has pleaded with President Mills to ensure that money due public schools is released to them so the challenges they are currently facing can be mitigated.
In a statement, the 2012 flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) said the future of over 6 million school children is at great risk, a situation which he noted is being aggravated “by the refusal of government to release budgeted funds for the running of public schools at both the basic and secondary levels.”
Information the NPP has gathered from the Ghana Education Service he noted makes grim reading as he pointed out that “at the basic school level, our information is that no single institution has received the Capitation Grant for the second term of this academic year: 2011-2012. The Capitation Grant supports the education of 5.4 million of our children from kindergarten to junior high school.”
Subsidies for all senior high schools he went on “have not been paid for the first two terms of the 2011-2012 academic year. This has put a huge strain on the finances of the 520 SHS institutions across the country. Worst hit are the day schools which have very little other resources to rely on to educate our children at that level.”
Senior high schools in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions, plus the northern parts of the Brong Ahafo and Volta regions may have to shut down he went on if their feeding fee allocations are not released immediately.
Government he said only released 35 percent of their budgeted feeding fees for the first term adding “for this second term, which began in January and ends in the first week of April, not a pesewa of the feeding fee has been released to any of the schools in the five regions mentioned.”
The situation has led to food suppliers for boarding schools in the affected areas refusing to supply on credit because of months of piled up arrears, he added in the statement.
At a time when Ghanaians are deeply concerned about the worsening standards of the country’s education system, the NPP he said is “extremely worried about the adverse effects of this inexplicable withholding of funds on the preparation of students for examinations this year.”
The development Nana Akufo-Addo pointed out is bound to affect the academic work of students, worsening the already falling standards of education, at no fault of the teachers and students.
In view of the foregone the flag bearer said “we are therefore calling on President Mills to treat this as an emergency and take immediate steps to ensure the release of feeding fees to the schools. We are also calling on government to give the basic schools their Capitation Grant.”
He entreated government to pay the subsidies for SHS institutions because the current situation has put the fate of over 700,000 SHS students precariously in the balance as several activities have been suspended due to lack of funds. For example he observed, some schools have had their electricity supply suspended as a result of this.
By A.R. Gomda
