The Minority in Parliament has demanded answers on the actual number of tablets distributed to senior high schools as part of the free senior high school policyand the supplier has not been paid.
Addressing the parliamentary press corps on Thursday, August 22, 2024, Ranking Member on the Education Committee of Parliament Peter Nortsu-Kotoe said there is a lack of clarity on the distribution of the tablets.
He recounted the two different figures quoted at the manifesto launch of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), wondering why two different speakers would quote 9,000 and 90,000 as the number of tablets distributed so far.
He said the distribution of tablets is a program that the opposition NDC was in support of, but where ‘’you are not prepared for it, you don’t have any budgetary allocation, and you go into it, you create problems for the suppliers’’.
The Ranking Member on the Education Committee in Parliament further emphasised that the Minority is aware that 1,350,000 tablets were procured and the supplier had to look for a loan in dollar-denominated cedis, which means anytime the supplier goes back to pay the loan, they will calculate it in dollar terms.
He also alleged that the supplier has been denied payment for the tablets he supplied, and ‘’we don’t know why the government is refusing to pay’’ the supplier for the work done.
The lawmaker said “when this issue came up in parliament as part of the formula for GETFund, the government was going to shift the payment to GETFund, and as a committee on education, we resisted and recommended that the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Education should take up that payment.
He said the Speaker, Alban Bagbin, wrote to the Ministry of Finance to take up the payment for 900,000 tablets, and this has not been done.
“Our concern here is: why is the government refusing to pay for the tablets such that you are killing the business of the supplier? We will also want to know from the government how many schools have received the tablets so far and what number of students have received them so far because you cannot be making noise out of the fact the fact that you have supplied tablets to secondary schools. Meanwhile, I know secondary schools in my constituency have not received them, and the secondary school in my deputy, Dr. Clement Apaak, in Builsa South, has not received them. We are demanding from the government answers to why they are not paying suppliers; they are killing businesses, including that of the supplier of the tablet.’’
On his part, Dr. Clement Apaak took on the government, wondering why the government would peddle falsehoods about the distribution of the tablets.
‘’What is the point in making claims that are not true? Why do you announce to the whole world that you have procured and distributed 900,000 tablets when that is not the case? And why is the government, through the ministry, failing to do the needful even as requested by the Speaker of Parliament?’’
He was worried that the ruling NPP is going to leave power with a huge debt in the education sector, not limited to the tablet initiative but also suppliers of food items, school uniforms, sports apparel, and stationary.
He advised the government to be honest, sincere, and transparent in what it does and has not done.
‘’So if this government wants Ghanaians to take it seriously, then it must meet its obligations to all suppliers.’’
On the issue of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and matters relating to its budgetary allocations, he said it is a shame and we ought to be embarrassed that the government owes WAEC to the extent that it is incapable of fulfilling its obligations as far as its core duties are concerned.The further disruption of the academic calendar, he argued, would not bode well for the education of our young ones, adding that BECE is in arrears in terms of the amount the government is supposed to pay while expressing concerns about the delay in the marking of the WASSCE for school candidates to sue for the failure of the government to release funds to WAEC to conduct its activities.‘’So we believe it is our responsibility to draw attention to these issues with the hope that the government will do the needful.
A government that can find money in excess of Ghc300 million ostensibly to construct a cathedral, a government that can give away about 12 million dollars to a contractor for no work done at the Pwalugu dam, a government that can employ a CEO and a staff for the construction of the Keta Port for seven years for which we have seen nothing certainly must be able to find the money to address these very pressing issues, and these are the very issues Ghanaians care about.’’
Source: rainbowradioonline.com
