UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ASSOCIATION OF GHANA PRESS CONFERENCE SPEECH PRESENTED BY MR. TONY HENRY ARTHUR- FINANCIAL CONTROLLER OF USAG ACCRA, 6TH FEBRUARY 2015
Indubitably, and as we know, there is a greater consciousness today of the links and inter-dependence of the two social institutions; the economy and education This press conference has become important because as an association which is the mother body for all universities in Ghana; USAG has over 300,000 student membership and is anon-political and a not-for-profit organization and does not discriminate (tribe/ethnicity, religion, race, etc). USAG works at mobilizing and harnessing the human and intellectual potential and capacity of the University community and channeling them into valuable/positive projects and activities.
Our mission is to contribute our quota, as an academic and intellectual community, to the national, continental and global development agenda through constructive engagement with the people, agencies and organizations which have a stake (direct or indirect) in the socio-cultural, economic and political growth, progress and transformation agenda. Over the years USAG has been involved in advocacy, campaigns, project initiatives and implementation, Information dissemination, and Capacity building programs that focus in areas including:
· · Health and Education
· · Youth empowerment and development
· · Poverty reduction and Gender Equality
· · Good Governance and Decentralization
· · Conflict, Security and Peace
· · Economic development and growth
· · MDGs (and Post 2015 Consultations and Agenda)
USAG liaises with both Profit and Not-for Profit organizations at the grassroots/community, national, continental and international level to work at achieving objectives and goals of common interest. In a hypothetic-deductive analysis, it would be a tragedy of monstrous proportion for an association with this human resource and objectives to sit unconcerned and pretend all is well as far as university education, teaching and learning and students’ lives are concerned. We therefore wish to use this medium to lament, suggest, contribute, comment generally on policies and issues that affect us and state our stance on them The current economic downturn has affected every social institution in the country and hence we the university students have had a fair share of it.
Firstly, Ghana has been plunged into serious power crises. Even though Energy experts have identified power crises into three stages and put Ghana’s current power crises into the second, we the university Students Association of Ghana believe that every problem or challenge has got a remedy no matter how insurmountable they may seem. Power crises cannot be a pleasant situation and its effects are so severe that it calls for government response. In making economic analysis, we understand better the effect of the crises on our macro-economic indicators. The cost of production is relatively higher under this current unpleasant situation and the immediate effect is that businesses would have to lay off workers in order to keep their profit margins good and also, this cost is transferred to consumers of including students thereby making cost of living/schooling on our various campuses very expensive. More directly related to teaching and learning in our universities, the current irritating power crises have affected us greatly. Most of the evening lectures are not held, laboratory operations and experiments are not conducted, slowing down of research.
Teaching and learning have become very difficult in our universities. The result has been decreased students’ performances. The effects of these crises on security on our campuses too cannot be overemphasized. Even though the universities are committed to providing safe and healthy environment for students, the current ‘dumsordumsor’ makes it very difficult to be achievable. Recently, the number of rape, murder and robbery cases on our university campuses has been on the increase as a result of these power crises. If someone comes to the university to acquire some level of training and his or her security cannot be assured then how can smooth training and transfer of knowledge take place? If the saying ‘the strength of a nation depends on her youth’ holds, then we have a business calling the attention of the government to these worries of ours. We call on the government to really look into these issues. We again plead for special power time table for all universities and if possible there should be minimal or no lights off on our university campuses during examination periods.
GOVERNMENT SUBVENTION TO UNIVERSITIES It will be completely paradoxical or out of place for a lower middle income like Ghana to pay little attention to tertiary education, preferably university. It has been established that one of the ways to eradicate poverty is through education. If poverty is the worst form of violence, as Mahatma Gandhi said, and Ghana is suffering from abject poverty then it is incumbent on USAG to advocate for less expensive university education. Tertiary/university education in Ghana has increasingly become more expensive and hence affordable to only the rich. Presenting the 2015 budget, the finance minister stated that “the ministry will increase enrollment levels at SHS from 770925 to 786344 and from 32833 to 33490 in TVET. This will be achieved through interventions such as provision of subsidies for over 780000 SHS students and 33000 TVET students”. He added that only 60 % of JHS graduates are absorbed annually into the country’s second cycle institutions and in a bid to remedy this, the ministry of education will commence the construction of 200 community day SHS in 2014; and also to reduce the cost of special education to parents, 6800 pupils benefited from feeding grants in the second and third terms in the 2012/2013 academic year.
Then USAG asks; what would be the essence of this integration when they, after SHS, cannot afford university education? What would be the use of this absorption when the universities are not equipped to absorb the SHS graduates? What happens when they are able to afford community day SHSs and cannot afford ‘Community day universities’ and how well and long will they be able to work with the SHS certificate when the economy cannot absorb even the university graduates. These and many questions demand answers as far government subventions to the universities are concerned.
It is a paradox to mention that, despite the realization of income from oil, the nation is not in the capacity to provide enough funds as subventions to the universities. We state categorically that USAG does not support and will not support the idea of universities paying their own utilities and the weaning off subventions to all universities. We are vehemently opposing and calling for more government’s support to the universities to aid smooth running so that the cost of running the universities will not be passed on to the students. When this happens then we are not making university education more accessible to all.
Already fee paying programs like law and medicine have become programs that are more accessible to the affluent and the children of poor parents encounter much difficulty to pursuing them no matter how brilliant these children may be.
NET FREEZE ON EMPLOYMENT In our attempt to resolve our budgetary issues and earn fiscal prudence, many interventions have been made by the government through fiscal policy. However, we of USAG believe that we cannot throw away the dirty water with the baby in it. Presenting the 2015 annual budget, the minister of education made it clear that government is still going to embark on the net freeze on employment to the public sector with the exception of health and education. This came as a blow to us even though we must all keep faith with it. Although we have not entered into any form of a contract with the government to employ us after our degrees from our various universities, we also believe that it is the responsibility of the government to produce jobs.
If both public and private sectors could not absorb the huge number of university graduates and now public sector freezes then we can expect nothing more than graduate unemployment. We suggest that, even if some of these interventions are external, the government considers her decision. If university education does not give us those employable skills we need then we are calling on all stakeholders to restructure our university programs. We also use this medium to encourage our students to create their own jobs even though creation of jobs have now become difficult in Ghana We of USAG suggest to government to also fund more entrepreneurial skills of our students to reduce unemployment of our graduate and also increase private public partnership to put the private sector in a position to expand and absorb our graduates MITIGATION LEVY In as much as we recognize the various interventions by the government to ensure fiscal prudence, we also reiterate that some of these interventions sometimes make living and financing of our university education very difficult, in that they shift cost to consumers(students). Indubitably, we can only say that it is prudent for a nation to plan ahead and make provisions for future unforeseen events. However, we of USAG want to state that we don’t support this mitigation levy proposed by the government some time ago.
This levy, which according to the president, will be charged on petroleum products because the price of crude oil on the world market continues to fall, will be channeled into a fund to cushion consumers should the price of crude oil rise again. we don’t support because we believe that it will only past cost to us in that if we cannot enjoy the global fall in price of Brent crude oil, which has fallen to a new frame and half year below $50 per barrel (its lowest since 2009), just because the government has to settle a debt of GHC42OM with the . Every petroleum product now is also being taxed at 17.5%, then (as if it is not enough) the government suddenly comes to introduce a new levy because the price has fallen...what is the logical congruency in this? As regards the pricing of the product it has been agreed as a country to allow the market to determine (automatic adjustment formula), so if government who is supposed to keep faith with the policy of free market economy (with respect to pricing of petroleum products) now comes out to slam a mitigation Levy then what does the government seek to achieve. If every citizen is a consumer (but not everybody is a producer) and this levy only will shift the burden to the consumers to pay then when can citizens raise their standard of living In Ghana, the effects of fuel prices on the consumable goods cannot be overemphasized in that any change in the price of petroleum products has a the capacity to alter general prices of goods and services making financing our university education very costly. We have learnt that reduction in prices increases disposable income which in turn increases savings and hence investment. If this is the case, all other things being equal, then it does the future of this country look brighter as far as investment and capital development is concerned. It will be a tragedy of monstrous proportion not to accentuate the fact that government must make the lives of its citizenry better not bitter. This will not only be effective as a fund mobilization opportunity but will also burden us students as consumers. We therefore plead that this will not materialize so that our cost of living on campuses will not soar higher.
POLICY INVOLVEMENT Judging from the lens of the of the objectives, aims and advocacies of this association, one can readily say that disengaging a student’s group with high intellectual capacity like USAG, in decision making and youth policy formulation. We want to bring to light that our country is not doing very well in terms of our involvement in policy making, as compared to other countries like China and UK. Government is expected to involve their students groups or the youth in a range of governance activities. Yet, the conceptual bases of these are under-formed and often are theories.
Students are not overwhelmingly consumerists and, if they are, this has little impact on engagement activity on. Ignoring us in policy formulation and decision making suggests that the country has no regards for its youth. More evidently is the National Youth Authority Board which is still not constituted. There have been several calls to the NYA and the Ministry for Youth and Sports but all have yielded no results There has been several follow up calls but as it stands now there is little to be said as progress made.
This development we say is quiet unfortunate because it is adversely affecting not only USAG or even our mother union NUGS but it means as per the law that establishes NYA that the voice of the youth in National decision making is not being duly considered.
Permit me to list some of the areas in which our country is suffering because of this quagmire of the board not constituted.
1. The Royal Senche accord had no input from us or NUGS so far as we are concerned nor do any recognized youth group and I believe that we as youth also have a lot to offer our country when such strategic decisions are being made.
2. Again we can say with adequate knowledge that USAG or even NUGS was not consulted in the processes that led to the formation of the Youth Entrepreneurship Support (YES) Fund which I believe we would have made very relevant and timely contributions to both the planning and implementation of the Fund.
3. We have no doubt that there is an ongoing process to get the implementation plan for the National Youth Policy and yet again, we at USAG, major stakeholders as such, are oblivious of how it is being done.
We therefore bring to light that it is incumbent to involve students groups or better still; the youth is policy formulation in our country and we insist on the constitution of the NYA board now
GET GETFUND TO BE EFFICIENT We are not oblivious of the fact that there is budgetary allocation to the GETFUND, but as to whether those monies are credited to the fund for all of us to benefit, we cannot say it. This is also one of the reasons why we vehemently reject the implantation of the mitigation levy which will also be channeled into a fund. The GETFund, we of USAG know, is a statutory fund established in 2000 to, among other objectives; provide financial support for agencies and institutions under the Ministry of Education for the development and maintenance of essential academic facilities and infrastructure in public educational institutions, particularly in tertiary institutions. It is also to provide supplementary funding to the Scholarship Secretariat for the grant of scholarships for gifted but needy students for studies in accredited tertiary institutions in Ghana.
Over the last 13 years, much has been achieved, especially in the areas of infrastructure development on the various campuses across the country, from tertiary down to second-cycle institutions. An annual increment in GETFund allocations and the fund’s achievements notwithstanding, it is bedeviled with funding challenges mainly as a result of the government’s inability to fulfill its financial obligations. Finance for the fund comes from sources, including the Valued Added Tax (VAT), money allocated by Parliament for the fund and money that accrue to the fund from investment made by its board of trustees. The struggle with finances means that apart from the abandoned infrastructure projects, students living on the coffers of the fund face hardship outside the country. We are crying for its operation and efficiency because infrastructure projects in our universities so how do they expand the huge SHS graduates’ number We are crying because students who need scholarships to study in the universities are no more getting them. We are crying because students who are living on the coffers of the fund face hardship outside Ghana.
For instance, although the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning had, in a letter dated November 4, 2013, instructed the Controller and Accountant-General to pay the fund GH¢240,294,897.69 which, when added to the GHC88, 723,193 released will amount to GH¢362,439,109.31, less than the total budget allocation for the fund in 2013, the money was yet to be credited to the GETFund account. While in 2012 the budgeted allocation stood at GH¢545,440,000, the fund received GH¢505,549,121. If the days or demonstrations are over, then we plead the government to get GETFUND to be work.
Our purpose of this conference, which has always been so, is to accentuate our problems and worries for immediate attention and once our case has been made we hold our expectation and envisaging redemption by the government.
Thank you.
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