Colleague National Officers of NUGS, National Executive Committee Members, Bloc Executives present, SRC and local NUGS Executives from member institutions herein present, our friends from the media, Fellow Students, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good morning.
My name is Prosper Dzitse, the President of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS),
I warmly welcome you all to this important press conference where we are essentially going to highlight a number of issues in our educational front which are of great concern to the student movement and also acknowledge efforts being made to address the issues or the lack of it. In no particular order, we have categorized the issues under the following headings and wish to interrogate them as such:
📌GETFund and matters arising
📌National Youth Authority and matters arising
📌Mathematics, Science and Technology Scholarship Scheme (MASTESS)
📌Utility Subsidies and Public Tertiary Institutions
📌Power outages
📌Moratorium on Public Sector Employment
📌National Service Postings
📌Concerns at the Basic Educational Level
📌Concerns at the Second Cycle Institutional Level
📌Free SHS
📌Concerns of Private University Students
📌Security on our various campuses
📌General Educational Issues
Conclusion
GETFUND AND MATTERS ARISING
NUGS wishes to register its displeasure at the way and manner government is handling issues regarding GETfund allocations. As we speak, the fund has been in arrears of over GHC 600 million for several months; yet government has not put in the needed efforts towards this statutory obligation as mandated by the GETFund Act, Act 581. Not even a high court judgment in this regard secured in 2014 by Richard Nuamah, a youth activist could compel government to settle GETFund arrears.
Government’s lack of commitment to the cry of GETFund is very worrying. It is no more newsworthy to hear every now and then that GETFund is broke and as such cannot carry-out its primary mandate of providing finance to supplement the provision of education at all levels by the government, particularly in public tertiary institutions, because the fund has consistently been starved of its legitimate budgetary allocations which however, is a palpable contravention of the provisions in the GETFund Act 2000, (Act 581). It is worthy of note that Section 2 of the Act provides that GETFund shall mainly be financed by an amount of money, equivalent to two and half percent (2.5%) out of the prevailing rate of Value Added Tax (TAX) to be paid by the VAT Service to the fund or such percentage not less than two and half percent of the VAT rate as Parliament may determine.
The net effect of government’s failure to adhere to this law and accordingly transfer GETFund money collected through VAT to the fund has completely crippled the operations of the GETFund Authority and rendered it ineffective. It is actually not surprising that if today, you went round to inspect GETFund projects in our tertiary institutions, you would be overwhelmed by the state of neglect and complete stagnation of such projects; a development which has now compelled some school authorities to surcharge students as a desperate measure to raise funds for the completion of such projects.
Again, GETFund’s mandate also includes catering for the educational expenses of Ghanaian students who are studying abroad on GETFund scholarship. Unfortunately, these innocent students are now being threatened with imminent dismissals from their respective institutions abroad due to non-payment of fees. Our office (NUGS) has continuously received distress calls from such students on daily basis regarding their ordeals and the need for urgent steps to arrest such. We are therefore calling on the government to take pragmatic steps towards resolving this issue with a sense of urgency.
FORMATION OF STATUTORY BOARDS THAT HAVE STUDENT REPRESENTATION (NYA/GETFund)
NUGS is highly displeased over government’s failure to appoint substantive boards for statutory institutions that have student interest and representation; a development that continues to hinder the smooth administration of those institutions. Such boards include GETFund and the National Youth Authority. For instance, in the case of GETFund, the president is yet to appoint a governing board for the authority; two years after the expiration of the mandate of the last Board in the year 2012. Same can also be said about the National Youth Authority (NYA), both of which have no Board as we speak. Interestingly, one can only but be fascinated with the alacrity at which the President reconstituted the Board of the Ghana Airport Authority when the mandate of the last Board expired in recent past. It actually took the president less than a week to do that, yet in the case of GETFund and NYA; we are talking about three years and still counting. How pathetic!
We wish to observe that GETFund is one of the achievements of NUGS through several months of student agitations which compelled government to put up such a fund and therefore we shall not sit aloof and see it collapse before us. NUGS shall adopt every legitimate means to salvage the fund from its current predicament because the repercussions of such would be unbearable. To this end, NUGS wishes to call on the government to as matter of urgency, release the huge GETFund arrears and also constitute the GETfund board as well as that of the National Youth Authority (NYA) else we shall advise ourselves.
Furtherance to the above, NUGS is also calling for the immediate dismissal of the current CEO of the National Youth Authority, Mr. Ras Mubarack for blatant disregard of the interest of Ghanaian students in his dealings. For instance, he deliberately refused to engage the leadership of student youth groups in the country throughout the processes leading to the launch of the policy. In fact, we were completely sidelined and attempts made to reach him were unsuccessful. To that extent, we think that there is no student interest in the current policy and wish to put the blame at his doorstep. NUGS also takes serious exceptions to his demeanor and gross display of arrogance before us and we think that he is not deserving of such sensitive position.
MATHEMATICS, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY SCHOLARSHIP SCHEME
(MASTESS)
Regrettably, government’s failure to pay GETFund arrears has resulted in the ailing state of the MASTESS scholarship programme; a scholarship scheme which was instituted sometime in 2009 for brilliant but needy Science, Maths and technology students at the nation’s tertiary institutions. The beneficiaries of this scheme are now being threatened with withdrawals from their institutions if they are unable to pay their fees because GETfund is not releasing their scholarship subventions. This is not the time for promises or assurances, government must just pay GETfund its due to make the authority financially viable in order to be able to sustain the MASTESS programme.
UTILITY SUBSIDIES TO PUBLIC TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS
NUGS wishes to once again reiterate its age-long position that students in public tertiary institutions shall fiercely resist any attempt by our school authorities to pass-on the cost of utility bills to the poor Ghanaian student who is already overwhelmed by the rising cost of tertiary education in the country. This position is a done deal and nonnegotiable. We the leadership of NUGS have on several occasions engaged the relevant authorities including the ministers of education and power as well as officials of ECG and VC-Ghana on this contentious matter but it doesn’t appear much has been achieved in finding amicable settlement to the impasse. Government officials keep on assuring us that everything is under control. In fact, the education ministry recently furnished us with a press statement followed by a cabinet memo purporting to allay our apprehension and instructing ECG to stop tormenting heads of public tertiary institutions for their electricity bills because that is the responsibility of government. School heads were also instructed not to surcharge any student for utility bills. Unfortunately, these assurances have not achieved anything because ECG is still bent on ensuring that they retrieve every dime owed them by the institutions probably because of previous experience of financial responsibilities on the part of government. In other words, ECG is sending a strong message to the government of their insatiable readiness to flouting the directive which was contained in a cabinet memo dated 20th June, 2014; copies of which we have in our possession. We have received several distress calls from a number of SRCs including UEW and UMAT SRC of broad-day moves by ECG to disconnect their lights even in the aftermath of the cabinet instructions to them to do otherwise.
From the foregoing, it is palpably evident that the only remedy to this seemingly insurmountable impasse is for government to show genuine commitment to paying ECG all the due arrears rather than continuing with this promise spree which has not yielded the needed result.
As if to aggravate matters, the Deputy Power Minister, Mr. John Jinapore said on Joy fm current affairs show, news file last Saturday 21st February, that government was seriously considering ways of making the traditional halls of residence at the various public universities pay for their utility bills just like the private hostels. This position sharply contradicts what was purported to be the official position of cabinet. NUGS is calling for an immediate reconciliation of the two positions. As we conclude on this, we wish to charge on our constituents to braise themselves up for a major showdown with government should there be any attempt to levy students with these utility bills. Students of this country have exercised enough restraints already on this matter and can no longer tolerate any lackadaisical attitude from the managers of our national purse as far as this and other issues are concerned. Enough is enough and we are ready to strike within the confines of the law in ensuring that our educational rights and freedoms are protected to the latter.
THE POWER OUTAGES (DUMSOR)
What again do we have to say about this infamous dumsor phenomenon which has not been said before? The problem is increasingly becoming more and more exacerbated by the day and we are continuously being greeted with a number of excuses by those who should be providing the necessary solutions. There cannot be an exaggeration of the devastating effects of this on students and the education sector in general. The continuous outages are not just rendering teaching and learning ineffective but also a threat to national security.
Teaching and learning cannot go on smoothly in our schools because of the agonizing intermittent power supply which to a large extent is blamable for the poor academic performance of many students of late. It is no more unusual to see students walk long distance at night in a desperate attempt to find lights so they could study. In some cases, they are compelled to study by the streets of our cities taking advantage of the street lights. We ask our government, for how long should this ugly spectacle continue? Must we all withdraw from school or lose our lives before government appreciates the gravity of this crisis and do something about it?
We are all very much aware that government is not oblivious of what it is supposed to do in tackling this crisis head-on. So government certainly knows what to do. The current problem we have is not one of generation but our inability to meet our full operation capacity because of government's inability to invest in buying crude to power our existing plants to get the needed energy. Moving forward, NUGS wishes to suggest that government should as a matter of urgency, prioritize investment into this sector because energy remains the number one driver of our economy.
FREEZE IN PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYMENT
Government's decision to continue the infamous policy of putting a moratorium on public sector employment is very problematic and will aggravate the unemployment menace in the country; which remains arguably, our number one threat to national development and security. The biggest worry for graduates and students in the final year is unemployment. The future is unfortunately very bleak. Over 50,000 tertiary graduates are churned out every year onto a future of uncertainties. Last year about 76000 National Service persons have been deployed to various institutions. Our simple question is where are they going after August this year if none of them can be retained in the public sector after their National Service assignment?
NATIONAL SERVICE PRE-REGISTRATION LEVY
NUGS has observed that some of our constituents have raised serious concerns regarding recent moves by the National Service Secretariat to levy all prospective National Service personnel with a GHS 40. 00 as pre-registration fees which is expected to take effect this year. We do not subscribe to the arrangement where students are going to be prevented from serving their country because of their inability to honour this upfront payment. What then happens to those who genuinely cannot pay? No national service for them? Isn't national service mandatory on every citizen? Isn't national service supposed to come with some national pride? Why take away this pride from us? This is obviously a new policy and requires a lot of public education from the NSS secretariat to make students properly appreciate it. We are by this release therefore, imploring the national service secretariat led by Dr. Kpessah Whyte to come clear on this policy for the good of all.
CONCERNS AT THE BASIC EDUCATIONAL LEVEL
NUGS has observed with great disquiet the lack of proper monitoring and supervision of teachers at this level of education resulting in poor educational output which is to the detriment of the nation. The menace of teacher absenteeism continue to be a matter of great concern to all education watchers; even though we are quick to admit that government has done a lot in checking this worrying trend culminating in the reduction of percentage of teacher absenteeism from 27% to 11% at the end of 2014. NUGS commends government for this feat and wish to urge the education ministry as well as the Ghana Education Service (GES) to do more in ensuring zero tolerance for teacher absenteeism and other negative enterprises by some teachers which have negative effects on innocent students. It has also come to our notice that some school heads and teachers are charging unauthorized fees which is of great discomfort to parents and guardians.
The education ministry and Ghana Education Service have been very critical of this and we wish to also add our voice in condemning this practice. We acknowledge the fact that the school feeding programme is seriously challenged because of huge government indebtedness to the caterers employed under the programme. The union finds this development as worrying and untenable. To this extent, NUGS wishes to call on the government and other relevant authorities to take immediate steps in resolving some of these challenges at the basic education level since it is basic education that forms the basis for higher learning.
CONCERNS AT SENIOR HIGH SCHOOLS
The nation’s second cycle institutions are also not spared of some of the fundamental challenges bedeviling basic education in the country. However, we wish to for some justifiable reasons, focus our attention on the growing culture of indiscipline, hooliganism and acts of maladministration as well as religious discrimination which are notoriously gaining prominence at this level of education. For the records, NUGS wishes to unreservedly condemn these acts of violence by the students as the means of seeking redress to their concerns. On religious discrimination, we wish to remind ourselves that Ghana has come a long way in ensuring that religious tolerance remains our pride and there is no room for retrogression. We wish to call on school authorities to respect the religious rights and freedoms of their students as underpinned by both the letter and spirit of our 1992 constitution.
NUGS has also noticed with great concern that we are not doing well in handling student agitation as a country at all. Instances of police and military brutalities meted out to rioting students at Wa Islamic senior high school, Bolgatanga SHS, Ghana SHS, and recently, St. Paul college which have led to the death of some students and the closure of these schools are still fresh in our memories. In as much as we condemn the unpopular actions of the students because of our love for constructive engagements and due process, we also think this should be a wake-up call on us to take a holistic look at how we handle the concerns of students at this level.
In the light of this, NUGS wishes to make a passionate appeal to all the relevant stakeholders especially the ministry of education, Ghana Education Service, heads of private second cycle institutions as well as the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) to support our efforts in establishing regional SRCs in regions that have none whilst strengthening the existing ones to make them more fortified in order to be able to champion the interest of their constituents and help redress some of these issues as and when they come up in pursuance to our regulatory regime as well as the culture of natural justice. This is because, we have observed that most of these things happen in regions that have no regional SRCs and therefore the students are often left with no option but to take their destiny into their own hands in their fight for justice and liberation.
FREE SHS
NUGS commends government over attempts to gradually introduce free SHS system in the country effective this year as contained in the 2015 national budget. The union recognizes the need to make education progressively free as provided for in our 1992 constitution. However, a lot of education watchers have raised a number of reservations regarding the way and manner government wishes to proceed with this policy and its feasibility. We associate ourselves with those concerns and wish to also raise the following nagging concerns which form the basis for our doubt.
From where we sit, there is no clarity regarding how much it would cost the government to implement this policy as well as the source of funding. We are therefore calling on government to come clear on this. Again, we also wish to find out from the government whether basic education is completely free, qualitative and accessible before proceeding to make SHS free. How sure are we that this is not another campaign device intended to win political sympathy for the ruling class? We are essentially asking these germane questions because as a union, we are concerned about the sustainability of this policy and whether it can indeed secure the future of our young generation and not aggravate matters at that level. This is because we are all witnesses to government’s dereliction of financial responsibilities relative to the payment to feeding subventions to Senior High Schools in the country.
PRIVATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Our constituents at the private universities are suffering a lot of injustices stemming from acts of unfair discrimination to instances of government neglect, high fee charges among others. Students at the private universities are also Ghanaians who pay taxes just like their counterparts at the public universities and are therefore deserving of all the educational courtesies and rights as enshrined in our 1992 constitution. While we must commend the good work being done by the Student Loan Trust Fund (SLTF) led by Mrs. Sheila Naa-Boamah, we also wish to propose that a special package will be prepared for private university students under SLTF since they pay higher fees and as such need to be properly cushioned.
We are also calling on government and parliament to review the GETFund Act to ensure an extension of its mandate to make private university students direct beneficiaries of GETFund policies and programmes. To the authorities of our various Private institutions, we know your aim is to make money, we are also aware that you need resources to run the affairs of your institutions, we appreciate your efforts in helping provide education to our members, but we would like to plead with you to be considerate in your charges in order to help make the education your outfit provides affordable.
SECURITY ON OUR CAMPUSES
Security on our various campuses remains a major concern to the student front and we wish to call on the school authorities to ensure proper measures are put in place to nib this problem in the bud because issues of security cannot be compromised at all. We receive daily reports from various institutions of the porous nature of security on a number of campuses, we are not the least pleased with the way and manner such issues are addressed. Students have paid to have education; their lives must be secured in order to have these dreams materialize.
GENERAL ISSUES:
👉Graduate students👈
NUGS wishes to appeal to government to consider the inclusion of distance education student who are pursuing various graduate courses into the list of beneficiaries of government bursaries as well as the early release of such. The delay in releasing the results of many a graduate student by lecturers is becoming very alarming, can you imagine that a postgraduate education that should take 2 years to receive are now taking 5 to 7 years as result of undue delays? This is certainly unacceptable, how do we compete with the world at this pace in this era of technological and global advancement?
👉Employers/Industry👈
We are saying that stop asking fresh graduates for a working experience, if you do not have space to employ us say it. How can you be asking for 2 to 5 years working experience? Where does industry expect us to get such experience from as fresh graduates? Absolutely unfair to say the least. Sacrifice some resources in equipping us with the needed technical skills and help the academia identify your needs.
👉Academia👈
We want education that can give us results, give us quality education inspired by research; we want education that will help us contribute our quota effectively towards the building of our country even as you continue to demand for research allowance and better conditions of service, work with industry and policy makers to structure your courses towards national development. We know you can do it.
Health Institutions
We wish to draw government’s attention to the fact that since 2011, graduates from Korle-Bu school of hygiene as well as those of Tamale and Ho have still not been posted after the successful completion of their course of study. It is therefore our plea that government takes steps to ensure that the nation benefits from professional training especially as the nation continue to battle the menace of cholera and other diseases that require their services.
👉Special Schools👈
Another issue bordering NUGS has to do with the way and manner the plight of students with special needs is being handled. We have visited some of these institutions and can say on authority that governments as well as the relevant stakeholders are not showing commitment to their concerns; in fact, we are overwhelmed at the level of neglect with respect to their concerns. Government is failing to honor its financial obligations in the form of feeding subventions and utility bills to the institutions. In the light of this, NUGS wishes to appeal to government to take keen interest in the affairs of these students and commit the necessary resources to their course as well as call on the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE) to help in formulating policies that will help in the advancement of these students from the second cycle level to the tertiary level.
CONCLUSION
Per the issues that we have raised quite succinctly, it is very obvious that the students of Ghana are not demanding for a rocket science nor are we making utopian demands from our government and other stakeholders, we are only asking for the necessary ambience and opportunity to be created that would make it possible for us to realize our fundamental educational rights and freedoms to the fullest.
We all have a role to play in our forward movement as a country in as far as education in Ghana is concerned, students, parents, the academia, various communities, the media, employers and of cause government. Indeed the education of our country is too important to be left in the hands of the academia and that of government. While we have all agreed that government must lead the way by showing commitment towards our education, we must also not lose sight of the fact that we are all involved in building our motherland.
We wish to conclude by expressing fervent optimism that government and the relevant
authorities would take a cue from the aforesaid critical issues and act accordingly in meeting our justified expectations.
Thank you.
Long live NUGS
Long live Mother Ghana
ALUTA CONTINUA!!!
VICTORIA ASCERTA!!!
....Signed....
Rhodalyn Eshun
Press and Information Secretary
+233 246 701 359
Prosper Dzitse
President
+233 546 580 044
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