IT IS fast unfolding that claims by the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) that it has eliminated 1,700 schools under trees, as captured in the party’s much-discredited ‘Green Book’, are exaggerated myths throughout the country.
Information available to DAILY GUIDE indicates that some of the schools purportedly built by the NDC administration under the schools-under-trees programme were either constructed during the erstwhile New Patriotic Party (NPP) regime, by NGOs, churches; or they were not even schools under trees as tagged.
For instance, Amoamang Methodist Primary in the Nsuta-Kwamang Beposo in the Sekyere Central District in the Ashanti Region listed in NDC’s Green Book was not a school under any tree.
According to the NDC, “schools under trees” were areas where trees were used as shelter for teaching and learning.
However, speaking to DAILY GUIDE in a telephone conversation on Tuesday, Deputy Minister of Information Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa explained that apparently, the term “school under trees” did not mean literal schools situated under trees; they comprised schools that were merely renovated and not necessarily constructed from the scratch.
“Schools under trees are generic terms used,” he told DAILY GUIDE.
“The school under trees concept is a concept for schools in dilapidated condition-in conditions which are inhabitable. Some are under trees, some are even under sheds,” he explained.
About two weeks ago, Okudzeto Ablakwa released a list of 600 schools out of 1,700 that the NDC government claimed it had constructed. This has been dismissed as a hoax as some of the listed schools have been challenged by the owners, mostly churches.
The Danquah Institute estimates that the new schools that the NDC has actually constructed since 2009 are 400 and not the 1,700 it has trumpeted all along.
Cost
Even though he is one of the strongest advocates of the schools under trees policy, when pressed by DAILY GUIDE, Okudzeto admitted that he did not have an idea of the total cost of all the schools under trees that the NDC claimed it had removed. According to him, he would have to make a special request at the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFUND) to get the cost of all school buildings.
“My focus now has been to put out the 1,775, but I have not really considered the cost element,” the deputy minister told DAILY GUIDE.
These curious gaps have led critics to conclude that the whole policy was just a big hoax.
Source: GhanaWeb
