The National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) has challenged the Education Ministry to provide evidence that indeed, student leaders have agreed to the partial withdrawal of utility subsidies for public tertiary institutions.
NUGS expressed their displeasure at the Deputy Education Minister’s comment that stakeholders in education including student leaders have agreed to a cost sharing arrangement between government, on one hand, and students on the other in respect of the payment of utility bills at the nation’s tertiary institutions.
[contextly_sidebar id=”GsBFn5Ue8pZmoU9F2IYBaFr0mmtTroNR”]The Deputy Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa is reported to have made this statement at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) on April 15 when he addressed students during the second edition of the Ministry’s Campus Connect series.
According to NUGS, Ablakwa has been repeating this ‘falsehood’ on several media platforms which they claim has “justifiably created a lot of fear and panic among students across the country; many of whom have vowed to take on the NUGS executive for such a gaffe.”
NUGS is therefore demanding that the Deputy Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa must make public the said communiqué “he claims forms the basis for government’s decision to partially withdraw utility subsidies to be borne by students, which was reached at the end of a stakeholder meeting.”
Last year, the government directed public universities and polytechnics to pay their own utility bills; a directive which informed the management of these institutions to pass the utility costs on to the students.
Several student unions kicked against the directive and appealed to the government to reconsider.
The decision was later repealed after the sector Minister made a special submission to cabinet on why education institutions should be exempted.
Stakeholders meetings have since been ongoing to find alternative means of paying the utility bills of the public universities.
A statement signed by the NUGS General Secretary, Iddi Muhayu-deen clarified that the claims by Okudzeto Ablakwa are factually incorrect and must be disregarded by all.
The statement warned that if Ablakwa fails to produce that communiqué, which he claims received the endorsement of NUGS, “then he should not only desist from making such claims, but should also retract and render an unqualified apology to the leadership of NUGS for this unwarranted disservice. If he fails to do either, we shall advise ourselves.”
NUGS pointed out that if the government intends to withdraw utility subsidies to public institutions, “it should gather the necessary courage to make that point loud and clear rather than this cowardly approach of trying to ‘implicate’ student leaders in this enterprise as a cover-up for government’s unpopular move.”
The remarked that the current development is indicative that the government is afraid of the consequences and political ramifications of such move hence “the decision to play a smart one at all of us.”
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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