Deputy Ranking Member on the education committee of parliament, Dr. Clement Abass Apaak, has aimed a dig on the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) for neglecting and not making operational the E-Block schools started by the erstwhile Mahama’s administration.
According to him, though the government, under the leadership of President Akufo-Addo knows the importance of education, it still fails to make proper use of the over fifty percent completed E-Block projects.
The government has come under intense pressure from sections of the public, including traditional rulers and the minority caucus in parliament to complete the projects, particularly the E-Block schools that have been left unattended to solve the infrastructure deficit problems in schools and make education accessible to every Ghanaian.
And reacting to the issue in an exclusive interview on ‘Daybreak Upper East’ show on A1 Radio, the lawmaker said the president’s interest is to spend lavishly the country’s resources without allocating funds to the inherited projects.
“They are not willing to put in the monies evenly allocated to support the completion and initiation of critical educational infrastructure. If the NPP were that serious, what they ought to have done is when they took over power from 2017, 2018, 2019, they ought to have made budgetary allocations to the E-Blocks. We have money. Didn’t this president tell us that we have money and we are suffering? Is he not busy traveling in a luxurious jet, bathing in the sky? Don’t you think that fourteen thousand pounds per hour can complete some of these E-Blocks that are 80%, 90%, 50% even complete?” He quizzed.
He added that government is not oblivious of the role the E-Blocks will play in reducing the infrastructure deficit that has engulfed the secondary schools but is bent on not completing them.
Meanwhile, speaking on the same issue, an educationist, Nii Addi Armah has vented his anger on the government; thereby demanding that it completes the projects instantaneously.
He said the government’s excuse of lack of funding is a flimsy one since it keeps on borrowing without paying attention to the abandoned projects.
Mr. Armah, therefore, called on the government to consider completing the projects in order to address the sufferings the students go through as a result of congestion.
Source|A1radioonline.com|101.1|Elijah Beyeni Yenibey|Ghana
