The ”Friends of John Dramani Mahama”, (FOJODRAMA), have described Nana Akufo-Addo’s promise of free SHS in Ghana from September 2013 as ”The deception of the Century”.
At a recent Press Conference in Accra, the Spokesperson for the group, Lawyer George Tetteh-Wayoe referred to Nana Addo’s costing of 78 Million GHC for the 2013/2014 academic year, at his IEA Evening Encounter in September this year as the basis for the group’s conclusion.
He said, currently, the SHS student population in Ghana is over 720,000 with more than 300,000 backlog of students who have passed the BECE but who have not gained admission over the years because of lack of space.
“This year alone, more than 200,000 students passed the BECE and qualified for admission but could not gain admission”, he noted.
Mr. Tetteh-Wayoe further noted that given this situation, if a free SHS programme were to start in September 2013, we can expect as many as 1.5 million students to be taken care of. He however said that for argument purposes, the group used 1 million as the minimum possible student population to do their analysis.
He pointed out that Nana’s 78 million GHC for the 2013/2014 academic year amounts to 78 GHC per student, if one uses even 1 million as the total student population. This, he argued, translates to 26 GHC per student per term.
”This breaks down to some 28.8 pesewas per student per day which cannot even take care of the feeding cost of students, given that even without free education, the Government pays far more than that as feeding subsidies in the country’s Secondary Schools”.
He said even with that, parents are currently paying between 1.8 GHC and 2.5 GHC per student per day, just for feeding, and wondered how Nana expects to use 28.8 pesewas, which is not up to even half of a cedi, to feed a teenage student breakfast, lunch and supper in today’s Ghana.
Lawyer Tetteh-Wayoe, aka Ras Wayo of Big Brother 2009 fame, concluded by saying that, even if Nana Addo’s 28.
Source: GhanaWeb
