The Deputy Director of Communications for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Anthony Karbo, has cast doubts over President Mahama’s promise to complete majority of the 200 Community Day Senior High Schools (SHS) project before the November general elections.
Although the President admitted that his administration cannot complete all the 200 schools the NDC promised during the 2012 electioneering period, he was certain that 123 schools would be completed before the November polls.
“There are ten ready, the Ministry of Education has to set the date [for the inauguration]. We are building 123 as at now at various stages of completion. Some of them the sites have been handed over, they’ve started the profiling, but the early ones that we started, many of them are in advanced stages of completion.”
[contextly_sidebar id=”zpZWebc7QPNVH5v3hwcNkHTcZVkA6ceu”]“So although we promised 200, we have 123 ongoing, many of them will be ready before elections. We are not waiting to finish all before we populate the schools and so as we are finishing the schools and we are handing over to the Ministry of Education, we are putting the children to school,” the President said.
But Anthony Karbo speaking on Eyewitness News said, it will impossible for President Mahama to fulfill his promise since according to him, works were not ongoing on all the 123 sites as has been suggested.
“We are in 2016, we are seven months down the line into an election and the President is talking about having built some ten schools and that 123 are at various stages of completion or have been under construction. Clearly it is impossible for this government to fulfill promises and it shows how innocuous this government can be as far as keeping to promises are concerned; and we are quite clear that even the 123 that the President talks about, there is very little on the ground to show that work is ongoing. The work has not been steady, it has not been as rapid as we all expected that these schools are going to spring up…”
He said the party’s claim in the lead up to the 2012 elections to build 200 SHSs by 2016, which has not been done, clearly shows that they have deceived the citizenry.
“I think we need to be very clear that his excellency in the run up to the 2012 elections indicated that they were going to build 200 day schools in four years and that by 2016, they would have finished building those schools. Indeed, his Ministers and even the President went ahead to say that every other year, they are going to start build fifty. After the close of the first year, we questioned the government, they couldn’t provide answers, the second year we questioned government and they could not provide answers. It was at the end of the second year in their second term of government, that they started commissioning these schools.”
Mr. Karbo, who’s also the NPP’s Parliamentary Candidate for the Lawra Constituency in the Upper West Region says the delays in the completion of the project only exposes the President’s “inability to keep promises.”
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By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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