Vice President, Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has entreated the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to be factual with their claims as he believes the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) led by President Akufo-Addo has completed many E-Blocks than the previous NDC administration.
According to him, the ruling party has completed 30 E-Blocks as compared to the John Mahama erstwhile administration (29).
“When it comes to the E-Blocks, the previous government completed twenty (29), and we have completed thirty (30). So, you can see the data cannot lie, Check the data” he said.
Giving reasons for the flagship free SHS policy, he noted they wanted to create equal opportunities for the poor without compromising quality.
“There were those who opposed and bastardized the introduction of free SHS. They said it was a 419 promise, they said it would collapse the education system. If we had listened to them, free SHS would not have happened; but Nana Addo-Danquah Akuffo Addo stuck to his guns and we successfully implemented the free SHS policy”
He disclosed an additional four hundred thousand students have benefited from the policy with half of the number being girls, saying many would have been at home had it not been for the free SHS policy.
“When we implemented free SHS, a lot of middle-class families in Accra and the other cities were finding it difficult to get House Girls because the parents of the girls came for them, and put them into school. So, free SHS has been very beneficial for the girl-child in education”
“Thankfully, the predictions of doom for free SHS have not materialized. The recent results of the first batch of free SHS graduates have shown that quality has not been compromised. Indeed, the 2020 results of WASSCE candidates is the only year in the past six (6) years that more than fifty percent (50%) of candidates who sat the examination obtained between A1 and C6 in all core subjects. This is the first time in six years. More than fifty percent”
“We have also implemented not just free SHS; we’ve done free TVET, as a key component of the government free SHS initiative; and over sixty-five thousand students have so far benefited from the free TVET in various Technical Institutes under the Ministry of Education. We have abolished utility bills for students in tertiary institutions, the government has absorbed the examination fees for BECE and WASSCE”
He added, the government has doubled student loans from thousand-five hundred cedis to three thousand cedis and disclosed there are implementing a new policy in obtaining loans.
He said students, will have to provide their Ghana card to be able to obtain a loan instead of a guarantor.
Touching on other policies initiated, he said, “We abolished the three months pay policy and we have recruited, ladies and gentlemen, the recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff in the last five years has ninety-three thousand, seven hundred and twenty-four (93,724) teacher and non-teaching staff that we have recruited. This is the highest recruitment of teachers for any first-term government since 1992”
“We have restored the Teacher Training Allowances, restored nursing training allowances. We are also providing free WIFI because of the technological age to seven hundred and ten (710) SHS, forty-six (46) colleges of education, two hundred and sixty district education offices and initially we have done thirteen (13) public universities”
“We’ve also had one teacher one laptop policy, and we have distributed three hundred and fifty thousand (350,000) laptops to our teachers. We are investing in education, the infrastructure investments in the education sector by our government have been massive” he said.
The Vice President expressed that, in the quest to deal with challenges of infrastructure in SHS, one thousand, one hundred and thirty-two SHS projects (classrooms, dormitories, libraries, ICT laboratories) and others are under construction.
He disclosed six hundred and seventy-eight (678) have been completed and has promised the government will do everything possible to complete the remaining ones.
BY Daniel Bampoe