Former President John Dramani Mahama says the Free Senior High School Policy will not be scrapped by his administration if he returns to power in 2020.
“Free SHS is here to stay,” he stressed.
“Indeed, it is underpinned and guaranteed by the 1992 Constitution of Ghana and it cannot be reversed by any government.”
Mr Mahama made this known on Wednesday, August 14 while addressing delegates at the 27th Annual Residential Delegates’ Congress of the Ghana National Union of Technical Students (GNUTS) held in Kumasi, Ashanti Region.
This comes in the wake of assertions by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo that some people are against the policy; hence, campaigning against it.
Stopping short of mentioning names, the president was clearly alluding to the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
“They are dreaming that they are going to come back to power to cancel the policy,” President Akufo-Addo said on a tour of the Upper East Region on Tuesday.
“I want them to know that they are not coming back to power, and the Free Senior High School policy has come to stay. They still haven’t woken up from their dreams; they dreamt in 2016 that they were on course for victory. They did not know that the Ghanaian people were no longer interested in entrusting them with power. They still haven’t woken up from their dreams.”
But Mr Mahama said he will rather call a stakeholders’ meeting upon return to power to arrest the bottlenecks plaguing the policy.
“In the first three months of my coming into office, we will hold a stakeholders consultation with parents, teachers and education experts to identify and eliminate all the bottlenecks that are affecting the effective implementation of the policy.”
The policy was introduced “progressively” by Mr Mahama’s government in 2015 but was fully rolled out by the Akufo-Addo government in 2017.
Source: 3news.com|Ghana