Former President and flagbearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, says his government would continue to pay nurses’ and teacher trainees’ allowances if he is elected president in 2024. Payments, he said, would continue until certain legal amendments are made to allow nurses to qualify for student loans. He made this statement during a media engagement wrapping up his four-day tour of the Upper East Region.
It would be recalled that the former president canceled allowances for trainee teachers and nurses for new students. These allowances were to be replaced by student loans, coupled with the removal of the quota system. However, the allowances were restored when the Nana Akufo-Addo-led government took office, a move that the former president described as politically convenient.
The former president, however, stated that a new John Dramani Mahama government would not immediately cancel the allowances. Instead, it would work to implement what he called an enhanced student loan system.
“We will keep the status quo for now because, under the student loan scheme, nurses do not qualify. Therefore, we need to make some amendments before we can transition them to student loans. So, we’ll maintain the current system until we can make the necessary changes to move everyone to a student loan system. We are calling it the enhanced student loan because we need to increase the amount to make it meaningful for students. Once a student gets a job, we must have a mechanism to start deducting payments to support the next batch of students.”
He also criticized the government for the irregular payment of these allowances, urging the government to pay what is owed.
“The reintroduction of teacher allowances is questionable when the government can’t pay them. In some cases, the government owes allowances for up to 30 months. Some students have gone from first year to third year, completed their studies, and never received their allowances. The government is pretending to pay the allowances for political expediency. We were substituting them with a student loan. The students were unhappy, and let me explain how we handled it. We did not cancel the allowances immediately. Those who were receiving allowances continued to do so until they completed their studies. New students, however, started with a student loan. So, it’s not as if we took the allowance away from those who were already receiving it. Those on allowances continued to receive them while new students started with the student loan system. We phased out the allowances for those who were receiving them and replaced them with the student loan system for new students.”
Source: A1Radioonline.Com|101.1MHZ|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Bolgatanga
