Consider Sponsoring Assemblymen With GETFund And Not Ministers: A Proposal To The Current GETFund Administrator

Introduction
The Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) sponsorship beneficiary list made public by the Auditor-General has already generated a lot of national debate and the topic is still under discussion. It has been revealed that the issue has become a matter of mutual concern for both the opposition NDC and the ruling NPP so there is GETFund silence hour declared over the nation. In this matter, we have not seen or heard the usual political propaganda by the opposition NDC castigating the ruling NPP and saying that that they (the NDC) are trying to protect the public purse. We did not also see the NDC boycotting parliamentary debates and walking out from proceedings because of the GETFund saga. In fact, the Minority did not react to the GETFund issue as they did to the new voters’ registration and the missing excavators. The reason is that some of the GETFund beneficiaries are said to be NDC members. The NDC General Secretary Mr. Asiedu Nketia had already stated that his son had benefited from the GETFund. This article looks at the mandate of the GETFund, expresses the need to rather sponsor Assemblymen with the Fund and not Ministers. Relevant justifications are provided for the submissions.

GETFUND’s History, Legal Framework And Mandate

Under the authority of an Act of Parliament (Ghana Education trust Fund Act, 2000 Act 581), the GETFund was established on 25^th August 2000 upon the strength of article 175 of the Constitution, 1992.The Fund however started its operations in 2001. The core values the GETFund cherishes are accountability, ethics, equity, efficiency, professionalism and transparency. These are beautiful and enduring core values. In fact, setting up the GETFund is one of the remarkable achievements of the Kufuor Administration, mindful of the fact that the Fund was established 8 months after that Administration took office on 7^th January 2000.

The main legal purpose of establishing the GETFund some two decades ago is to provide funding to supplement the provision of education at all levels nation-wide by Government.

Section 2(2) of the GETFund law provides that the GETFund and for that matter the Administrator of the Fund should spend monies from the Fund in certain approved ways in order to serve the legal purpose for which the Fund was established.

Notable among the stipulated items of expenditure for which the Fund is meant [section 2 (2 a- e) of the GETFund Act are to:

1. Provide supplementary funding to the Scholarship Secretariat for the grant of scholarships to gifted but needy students for studies in the second-cycle and accredited tertiary institutions in Ghana.
2. Contribute monies from the Fund towards the operation of student loans schemes for students in accredited tertiary institutions through loan scheme mechanisms and agencies, approved by the Minister of Education
3. Train brilliant students as members of faculties.
4. Undertake research and other academic programmes of relevance to national development.

Having reiterated the foregoing GETFund expenditure items specified in Act 581 of 2000 and juxtaposing it against the beneficiary list made public by the Auditor General, one is compelled to ask some questions, no matter how rhetorical those questions may sound. It is public knowledge that the current Education Minister (Hon. Mathew Opoku Prempeh a.k.a Napo), the Dome-Kwabenya MP (Hon. Sarah Adwoa Sarfo) who dovetails as Procurement Minister as well as Hon. Mavis Nkansah Boadu (MP for Afigya Sekyere East) have also been given sponsorship packages in huge sums. Mindful of this public knowledge and juxtaposing it against the GETFund’s mandate, one would like to ask that:

5. Are the MPs also gifted but needy students?
5. Why didn’t the MPs take student loans? Students who entered the tertiary institutions from SHS are rather given student loans to pay back and if they don’t we publish their names in the media to name and shame them. However, MPs who are even sector Ministers and Ministers of State are given free disbursements from the GETFund. How reasonable is this or is it an Animal Farm Infection from George Orwell’s farm where 2 legs are bad but 4 legs are good?
5. Or are they being trained as brilliant students to become members of faculties?
5. If indeed GETFund is also meant for funding research and other academic programmes of relevance to national development, then why are most science resource centres in our Senior High Schools lacking relevant items at the laboratories? Why is the GETFund not funding Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research to carry out relevant medical research leading to the development for vaccines? Or is it a matter of misplaced priorities?

Looking at the membership of the Board of Trustees of the Fund, it is surprising that under their advisory watch, the GETFund Administrator could allocate the funds in an unacceptable manner thereby leading to the audit observations. The most surprising aspect of it is that there is even a National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) representative on the GETFund Board of Trustees (BoT) yet monies are disbursed from the Fund inequitably and somewhat clandestinely to public officials who cannot be said to be needy students. Is the NUGS representative’s voice frosty on the BoT?

I am so happy that Hon. Kennedy Agyepong has commented bluntly again on this issue. He said, “It’s a shame and abuse of power for MPs to take scholarship from GETFund. Parliamentarians should desist from competing with the poor if they have a conscience.” One admirable thing about Kennedy Agyapong is that, a thing is bad irrespective of who has done it. Even though Adwoa Sarfo was his wife, he was able to condemn the practice of the MPs being sponsored by the GETFund.

As if sponsoring the MPs with the GETFund scholarships is not shameful in itself as Hon. Kennedy Agyapong put it, Hon. Sarah Adwoa Sarfo , the Dome-Kwabenya MP came out to say that the GETFund scholarship was to enable her study to “serve her constituents, Parliament and the nation better.” I feel this comment is not only cheeky but also comes to undermine the NPP’s assurance before the 2016 elections that they had the men and women to do the work. Are the men and women now being trained? The comment also appears to be a self-betrayal by Adwoa Sarfo. This betrayal leads one to question whether or not Hon. Adwoa Sarfo is a square peg in a round hole so there is the need to use state funds to make her a round peg so that she can fit into the round hole in which she has been placed as a square peg.

The three MPs, Hon. Adwoa Sarfo, Hon. Mathew Opoku Prempeh and Hon. Mavis Nkansah Boadu (who is said to be a cousin of Adwoa Sarfo) had been captured as students of Harvard Kennedy School in the US who received huge sums as sponsorship packages from the GETFund, the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) and the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC).

It would be recalled that in March 2018, the same Adwoa Sarfo demanded an US$8,500.00 from the NHIA to cover her plane ticket and accommodation on an Executive Programme at the Harvard Kennedy School from April to May 2018. This is one of the factors depleting the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) to the extent that the NHIA is unable to reimburse the healthcare providers promptly. If Ghana were a serious country, we would have rather used part of the NHIF to fund medical research and develop vaccines for certain diseases including but not limited to Malaria which should not be killing us. Most of the public hospitals lack modern medical equipment yet we waste the NHIF on sponsoring MPs.

What is surprising is that even though the Education Minister (Hon. Mathew Opoku Prempeh) himself benefited form GETFund sponsorship, he was reported recently to have said Government will no longer give study- leave- with -pay to teachers. Can you imagine the Animal Farm style? With this attitude of cynical political leadership, how would corruption stop in Ghana?

What is also alarming is that the NDC’s Hon. Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has some questions to answer in the GETFund saga. He was the Deputy Minister of Education at the time the scholarships were given to the three NPP MPs. It has been alleged that Hon. Okudzeto Ablakwa even usurped the authority of the GETFund Administrator by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Lovely Professional University (LPU) on behalf of the GETFund in 2016. One may say that both the NDC and NPP elites only shared monies from the GETFund among themselves to the detriment of gifted but needy students.

Why Assemblymen Should Rather Be Sponsored With The GETFUND

I think that if there are people the GETFund must extend its tentacles to sponsor, then it should be Assemblymen. By our democratic concept, the Assemblymen are the local government version of the MPs. They make byelaws and contribute immensely to local governance in the country yet they are not paid salaries. Their job is virtually sacrificial hence, most of them aim to also become MPs while others align themselves to various MPs or political parties even though they are not supposed to be overtly partisan.

Perhaps a significant number of the Assemblymen are people who could not climb the academic ladder beyond SHS even though some are professionals and well educated. Indeed, if majority of the Assemblymen could not attend any tertiary institution perhaps due to financial difficulties, then GETFund should rather sponsor them not MPs who dovetail as Ministers. Imagine how motivating it would have been for Assemblymen if the state makes provisions for them at either GIMPA or Institute of Local Government Studies or both to enable them study various courses that are fully sponsored. Doing so should be more reasonable than sponsoring MPs who take fat salaries and allowances. In my view, most of the Assemblymen are gifted but needy and should therefore be sponsored by GETFund for academic courses. They do a voluntary job so the state does not pay them salaries. Even the allowances they receive per sitting are meagre and the payment of the allowances even delays.

Conclusion
The GETFund’s mandate is clearly defined in law. Most of the laws are made by Parliament and the GETFund law is no exception. Lawmakers enact laws with the views that the laws must be obeyed. As such, he who calls for equity must come with clean hands. The lawmakers themselves must not be seen to be breaching the laws they make. A lawmaker who fails to obey the law he made should be seen as a Pharisee.

In my candid view, the Assemblymen need GETFund sponsorship more than MPs. Sponsoring the MPs with GETFund is waste of resources because the MPs are paid both salaries and allowances, but the Assemblymen are not salaried, and they receive very meagre allowances that delay in coming.

~Asante Sana ~
Author: Philip Afeti Korto
Email: [email protected]