Nurse and Teacher-Trainees’ Allowances Must Remain Intact

I vehemently disagree with Prof. Stephen Adei that the mere discontinuation of the stipends paid teacher- and nurse-trainees, that was abrogated by the Mahama regime of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and recently restored by the Akufo-Addo-led government of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), would generate adequate funding for the upgrading of our technical and vocational institutes (See “Prof. Adei Urges Government to Stop Allowances to Trainee Teachers, Nurses” Ghana News Agency.org / Ghanaweb.com 9/19/18). It is also rather ironic that Prof. Adei would have the Humanities, Social Sciences and Liberal Arts pay for themselves, instead of having such a proposal or rule apply more realistically to the vocational and technical and/or technological sciences as prevails in the most industrially advanced countries. We shall take up this latter subject in due course. For now, however, let us tackle the foregoing issue at hand.

The fact of the matter is that unilaterally and summarily abrogating nurse- and teacher-trainee allowances did not facilitate the expansion of public-school facilities by the Mahama government to enable the 300,000 or 30-percent of eligible Senior High School (SHS) students who could not annually enroll or have equal access to the game-changing improvement of their chances for a better future than that of their parents and grandparents. The fact of the matter is that successive governments have been perennially strapped for cash because of naked theft and broad-daylight robbery on the part of our politicians and the latter’s invariable initialing of corrupt contractual agreements that have invariably ended up in dastardly and deliberately orchestrated Judgement-Debt Rackets, such as the GHȻ 67 Million that was widely alleged by the media to have been secretly paid to a company called Construction Pioneers (CP), believed to be owned and operated by Mr. Ibrahim Mahama, the younger brother of former President John Dramani Mahama, by the former Mahama-appointed Attorney-General and Minister of Justice Mrs. Marietta Brew Appiah-Oppong in violation of stipulated cabinet approval. Now, let’s talk about nepotism.

Then also, of course, we have the Woyome Mega-Heist that continues to irritate and weigh heavily on the minds and consciences of honest and progressive hardworking Ghanaian citizens. That was a whopping GHȻ 51.2 Million literally flushed down the drain. Then also, there is the criminal case of the double-salary dipping National Democratic Congress’ parliamentarians who also “served” as members of the Mahama cabinet. These flagrant and flagitious fiscal mismanagement problems are what the former Director of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) ought to be addressing. As well, there is the alleged transfer of GHȻ 40 Million (the actual currency is not yet clear to me) of taxpayer money into the private bank account of the extant Chief-of-Staff of then-President John Dramani Mahama, to wit, Mr. Julius Debrah, that a civil society pressure group has just been reported to be pestering Mr. Martin Amidu, the Independent Special Public Prosecutor, to investigate. I have yet to familiarize myself with the full details of this alleged racket which, we are told, occurred in the leadup to the 2016 general election.

But what I want to equally highlight here is the fact that contrary to what the likes of the former GIMPA Director would have the rest of us believe, the Liberal Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and the non-technical or technological sciences are not well funded or remarkably mastered as Dr. Adei would have the nation and the rest of the world believe. The fact of the matter is that the general quality of Ghana’s public education leaves much to be desired. Ghana is not among the top-100 Countries in the World, according to an authoritative report released by the UN-affiliated and Paris-based Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) some 6 or 7 years ago. Chances are that in any country where the Humanities and the Social Sciences and the Liberal Arts, in general, are of exceptionally poor quality, such as Ghana’s, the vocational and technological sciences do not fare any better. I have said this, many times, and hereby repeat the same, that one disciplinary area or academic and professional endeavor cannot be soundly or wisely developed at the expense of all the others. That is simply not how development is done or has been done in the most technologically and culturally advanced countries of the world, such as the United States, Russia, China and Japan.

He may very well be a genius in Business Management and/or Administration, but it is embarrassingly clear that Prof. Adei understands very little of what organic and wholistic national development is about. And, by the way, the private sector of teacher- and nurse-education is nowhere nearly as developed as the public sector in Ghana. So it is rather scandalous to hear Prof. Adei talk about the adequate complementarity of the private sector in the training of teachers and nurses in the country.

*Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
English Department, SUNY-Nassau
Garden City, New York
September 19, 2018
E-mail: [email protected]