Are Ghanaians Our Own Enemies??

Fellow Ghanaians, as you all know, His Excellency, President Akufo-Addo together with the Hon. Minister of Education, Dr. Mathew Opoku-Prempeh upon realising the essence of education and being discontent with the poverty level among Ghanaians decided to offer our kids Free Secondary Education this academic year.

In this sense, the government of Ghana is spending not less than GHC1000 on each first year student placed in any of our public senior high schools. This is aimed at cushioning parents and removing the financial burden on them. This, I believe, is the simplest and fairest way of sharing the national cake among Ghanaians since each community stands to benefit.

However, certain people have taken advantage of the situation to exploit beneficiaries and this is not only unacceptable, but also unpatriotic.

In all the senior high schools, first year students who were offered admission were given prospectus and some of the major items expected from the students were chop box, trunk, and mattress. Whilst producers/sellers of these items were to thank God for the increase in demand, they rather resorted to increase the prices of the items astronomically. For instance, a trunk that was selling at GHC50 shot up to GHC150; a chop box that was being sold at GHC30 went for GHC80. These sellers are doing so because there is an assumption that the buyers had gotten free money from President Akufo-Addo.

How do we build a country this way, if I may ask?
Again, in spite of the education and warnings given to heads of educational institutions not to charge any fees of freshers, some headmasters have done the contrary. Besides, the NDC supporters are not giving this government a breathing space on this free SHS with their incoherent press conferences; and you the producers of the above-named items, instead of reducing the prices to enable our kids enrol for the programme, you're making things worse.

Could somebody be wrong in describing Ghanaians as "Very Difficult People"?

For the sake of our kids' future and that of this beloved country, let's complement the government efforts by making the free SHS succeed. We all have a meaningful role to play - government, teachers, parents, religious groups, sellers, students etc. The level of pessimism, exploitation of parents and the illegal fees being charged are a setback of the new policy.

Going forward, government should consider providing lockers at dormitories for students so that the issue of bringing chop boxes and trunks in schools become a thing of the past. The chop boxes even produce bedbugs and schools like St. Louis, K-Wey Get Hey are not entertaining that. Let other schools emulate their example.

Furthermore, the government should also liaise with mattress producers to supply each public SHS with mattresses as being done for the schools in the three Northern Regions.

We can't give free SHS to students only to realise that some poor students can't access it because of prospectus. The items on the prospectus are too many and something must be done about it.

#Iam4FreeSHS#
Katakyie Kwame Opoku Agyemang
Asante Bekwai-Asakyiri
"Vision, coupled with persistency, results in true success"