A former administrator of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), Sam Gariba defends alleged incidents of wasteful expenditures and illegality during his time in office between 2012 and 2016.

The Auditor-General in his performance report of the GETFund for the period of 2012 to 2018 found that the GETFund circumvented due processes and awarded scholarships in a wasteful manner and also to underserving Ghanaians.

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He explained that, the basis for which the government has taken this decision is to label the Free SHS money as a scholarship.

“By labeling it as a scholarship, it moves away from the Ministry of Education budget into the account or the budget of the office of government business where the Scholarship Secretariat is located,” Mr. Tsegah explained on Eyewitness News.

In his view, “within that context, it is right for the government to say that money is a scholarship money, and it will be handled and managed by the scholarship secretariat.”

The former GES director was speaking in relation to the Minority in Parliament’s concerns that the government’s decision to allow the Scholarship Secretariat to administer funds for the free senior high school policy was illegal.

The Minority based its argument on the GES Act which states that, the Service shall be responsible for the implementation of approved national policies and programmes relating to pre-tertiary education.

Mr. Tsegah, however noted that, the free SHS policy was modeled after the Northern Scholarship, which is “ a resource the Ghana Education Service never handled.”

The Northern Secretariat allocates monies to respective schools under the Northern scholarship to be utilized, but the Northern Scholarship has been saddled with well documented problems of its own in the past, with delayed payment of bursaries becoming almost an annual occurrence.

Mr. Tsegah acknowledged the past problems of the Northern Scholarship, but said the Scholarship Secretariat was not really at fault for problems having to do with the late release of funding.

He explained that “once the secretariat gets the money, it sends it immediately. So the problem is not really a Scholarship Secretariat matter. It probably has to do with the amount of money that government has to release at a specific point in time for the specific purpose of feeding students and providing other services.”

Mr. Tsegah held an optimistic outlook on the matter saying there was a “clear commitment” from the government because some arrears are so far being settled relating to school feeding, among others.

“There are two sides to it; the attitude displayed by the government, if it is anything to go by, raises some hope. But if you look at the history, then one has reason to be really concerned,” he stated.

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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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The scholarship scheme is in line with measures by the government in collaboration with stakeholders to help in the restoration of the town, which gained notoriety on May 29, 2017, for lynching Captain Maxwell Mahama, an army officer who was on duty there.

The scholarship followed a request from the leadership of the town about a month ago, to rekindle education in the town after students and parents fled the area following the gruesome murder of Captain Mahama.

Mr. Kingsley Agyemang, the Registrar of the Secretariat made the disclosure when a delegation of Elders of New Obuasi paid a courtesy call on him at his office in Accra, led by Dr. Lawrence Tetteh, President of the UK based Worldwide Miracle Outreach.

He said the scholarship under the Secretariat’s “Hardship Scholarship” would cater for second and third-year students who are indigenes of the town (both day and boarding), to complete their courses up to the tertiary level.

He said this will ensure that the future of the children is secured and not jeopardized by the acts of others.

Okyeame Kwabena Asare, the Chief Linguist of New Obuasi in response thanked the government for its support to rebuild the town.

Dr. Tetteh announced that he would be holding a crusade in the town dubbed: “Denkyira-Obuasi Restoration Crusade”, scheduled for October 11 to October 13, 2017 at the Denkyira-Obuasi Town Park.

Mr. Affail Monney, President of the Ghana Journalists Association, who was part of the delegation, called on the media fraternity to sharpen its focus on the new horizon that has emerged in the town.

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Source: GNA

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They are therefore calling for a review of the Cuban-Ghana scholarship program to make it more useful and stress-free.

In a statement copied to citifmonline.com, the President of the National Union of Ghana Students in Cuba, Nyarko Quansah said only two out of eight months allowances due them have been paid for this year.

He said the students, most of whom are studying medicine, are unhappy about their condition and believe it is as a result of the many lapses in the administration of the policy for the stay in Cuba.

They called on the scholarship Secretariate in Ghana to pay their allowances through their visa cards rather than the transfer to Ghanaian embassy in Cuba.

On accommodation, the students said, “the accommodation facility is nothing to write home about. We have constantly moved from one student residence to another for the perpetuating problems which we faced living in these residences. Currently, the majority of us are living in a residence where a little room is inhabited by 12 and 8 people, where 40 students have to compulsorily share a common washroom of 5 bathrooms and toilet of which 50% are out of use, either by leakages or non-drainage of the sewage. Such conditions are not favorable for studies or well-being of students.”

“Students are under no circumstance allowed to engage in any form business, any student found doing otherwise is likely to face repatriation. Our main source of finance is the monthly maintenance allowance of USD250.00 and the annual book allowance of USD360.00 paid through the embassy of Ghana to students. The constant delay of the allowances has resulted in demotivating and stressing out the students to the extent that the academic performances of some students has declined, others are emotionally and psychologically broken, some have even resorted to involvement in illegal businesses to finding ways of surviving these perilous periods.”

“All these combined and persistent factors have resulted in some students contracting certain chronic diseases like hypertension. On several occasions, the monthly maintenance allowance take as long as 8 or 9 months to get to these students, with so many stories surrounding these delays. From the beginning of the year until August this year, the government of Ghana has paid just 2 months (USD500.00) of the maintenance allowance out of the lot. Students are about starting a new academic year and with the economic state of this nation, these monies would exhaust in no time.”

“The simple conclusion students make is, Ghana government does not care about what happens to any of us, because for a nation to send its people (students) to another country and not care about their well-being is very heartless on its part. It so much seems like they do not care about how we survive, that is why they are okay paying students 2 months out of the 8 months they have lived in this year. They should at least be curious of how students survive, if they care,” they added.

This is not the first time Ghanaian students on government scholarships in other countries are complaining of maltreatment from the Ghanaian government.

Most have had to endure months of non-payment of their monthly allowances while others have been forced out of their residence due to non-payment of rents.

The government has on several occasions promised to address the problem but it has become recurrent as successive governments have all struggled to deal with it.

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By: citifmonline.com/Ghana

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This is despite Ghanaian Government Scholarship Students in China saying they have not received their stipends over the past 12 months.

The students, numbering about 20, in a statement copied to Citi News said they have been left demoralized as the financial constraints threatened their academic work and possible graduation with their means of livelihood being at the mercy of friends.

In a Citi News interview however,  the Director of the Ghana Scholarship Secretariat, Fuseini Lansah, said he was surprised by the developments; but added that his office could not be blamed for the delays in payment.

He explained that “during the first week of January, we called the bank of Ghana to transfer $78, 000 to cater for three months stipend for regular students, and the 9-month stipend for year-aboard Chinese language students. We have asked the mission to explain because we requested them to confirm receipt of the money and then give us expenditure returns after disbursement; but other missions have confirmed collecting the money.”

“This thing about China came as a surprise. Sometimes it takes time for the money to reach them. So we have asked the mission to give as a clear situation” he added.

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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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In addition, Dell announced it would offer its existing Chromebook laptop with a faster processor.

The move is designed to build on rising demand for the web-oriented tech.

According to research firm NPD, Chrome OS computers accounted for 24% of sales of sub-$300 (£177) PCs in the US over the first three months of the year.

It said many consumers were purchasing them as a budget second or third computing device, while schools and universities viewed them as a cheap replacement for ageing Windows XP computers that Microsoft no longer supported.

However, NPD added that competition in this commercial sector was likely to become tougher.

“None of Chrome OS’s competitors really expected anything last year, so they weren’t really prepared for it,” said Stephen Baker, the firm’s vice president of industry analysis.

“But everybody is prepared this year, and I think it will be a bigger challenge to gain share in volume.”

Even so, Google executive Caesar Sengupta – who spoke at the launch event – was keen to highlight the platform’s success at retailer Amazon, where eight of the current 20 bestselling laptops are Chromebooks.

In addition, he noted that nearly 10,000 schools had now equipped themselves with Chrome OS computers – about double the number that had been the case six months ago.

Limited laptops

Chrome-based computers tend to be cheaper than comparable Windows-powered rivals, in part because Google does not charge manufacturers to include its software.

They are designed to use web apps and online storage in most cases, rather than run programs off their hard disks.

Since their launch in 2011, Google has been adding features, the latest of which include voice commands and ability to play certain videos while offline.

But some programs remain unavailable, such as the full version of Photoshop, iTunes and many video games.

Intel chips

The newly announced Chrome OS hardware all runs on chips manufactured by Intel, which co-hosted the news event.

It was keen to highlight the inclusion of its Bay Trail-M chips in some of the laptops, which it said offered an extra hour of battery life compared to last year’s versions, were faster and could be fanless, and therefore thinner.

The chipmaker also announced that US manufacturer CTL planned to release a Chromebook based on an Intel-design later this year.

But it made no mention of Samsung, the manufacturer of the bestselling Chromebook model. The South Korean firm uses its own ARM-based Exynos processors.

Developing economies

Last year a total of 2.9 million Chrome OS-powered computers were shipped, according to the tech consultancy Gartner.

That was a fraction of the 280 million Windows-powered PC and the 12.5 million Mac OS computers delivered to retailers and customers.

But by 2016, Gartner forecasts that computers running Google’s system will have leapfrogged Apple’s hardware to take second place behind Microsoft’s ecosystem.

“There’s a couple of reasons – one is the number of vendors who are now pushing a [Chromebook] device,” explained Ranjit Atwal, research director at the firm.

“The second thing is the appeal they have in developing markets given their price points.

“You’re looking at large-screen notebooks for less than $200 with a good software ecosystem around them – that’s a compelling proposition. The only inhibiting factor is connectivity.”

Although Chromebooks can run software while offline they sometimesoffer reduced functionality – such as being able to view but not edit entries in Google’s Calendar app.

The computers also tend to have smaller hard disk sizes than their Windows/Mac equivalents – users are instead urged to rely on cloud storage.

While this helps keep their cost low, it again restricts their appeal in areas where broadband coverage is limited.

More details about the new models – and forthcoming Windows-based rivals – are likely to be announced at Taiwan’s Computex trade show next month.

Source: BBC

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