Vice Chancellors of the various public Universities are threatening to shut down their institutions if bills owed the Electricity Company of Ghana are not paid.
This was revealed by the General Secretary of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) after student leaders from the various public universities picketed at parliament on Tuesday.
Government and other stakeholders have been going back and forth over a new policy that will compel students in the country’s tertiary institutions to pay utility bills.
[contextly_sidebar id=”fT9nm0v28cFWsG0wYaBjcTkCxLIqEP7K”]General Secretary of NUG, Iddi Muhayu-Deen, warns the tertiary education sector will grind to halt if government does not intervene immediately.
According to him, government appears to be dilly-dallying with the issue since the position of the Vice Chancellors is clearly at variance to Government’s promise to the student body.
“We are here as a follow up to the initial petition, we brought to Parliament on this utility bills brouhaha. The inaction on the part of parliament was becoming so loud so we decided to follow up so we protest for the world to hear that the students of this country are agitated”. Per our engagement with government, there has been clarity. Government’s position is that they will continue paying for the subsidies. However, in our meeting today, the Vice Chancellors have indicated to us that per their correspondence with government all along, government indicated to them that they will only pay up to 2013 onwards, which means from 2013 onwards, the students will pay”.
He added “but we also have documents in which government has also stated that the Vice Chancellors should not levy students with utility bills and that government will continue paying. But now the Vice Chancellors have told us something different; and they told us after our meeting with them that if government does not pay, they are going to close down all the public tertiary institutions in the country with immediate effect. ECG as we speak is busily disconnecting electricity supply to the various public institutions because government is not paying.
Some polytechnics in the country were recently disconnected by the ECG due to non-payment of bills.
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By: Ebenezer Afanyi Dadzie/citifmonline.com/Ghana