The Minority members on the Education Committee of Parliament, on Tuesday, October 19, 2021, toured the Greater Accra and Volta regions to assess the current conditions of E-Blocks started by former President John Dramani Mahama in 2015/16.
The team was led by Deputy Ranking Member on the Committee Dr. Clement Apaak who is also the Builsa South Member of Parliament.
At Aflao, the team inspected the structure is which they said was about 90%, but there was no work ongoing.
At Ziope in the Volta Region, the E-Block is 80%, but the contractor has only been paid one out of five certificates he has raised since 2018, Dr. Apaak lamented.
At Goi in Sege, the structure is 20% complete, no work, totally, and the work has been abandoned, he told journalists.
Dr. Apaak said we are all aware of the inadequacy of infrastructure, which was why the obnoxious double-track system was introduced. So when we have structures like this, 90% complete at an original cost of Ghc9 million and yet, we cannot complete it for students to have access to education, for classroom sizes to be reduced, for communities to have hope that their wards are going to benefit from the free SHS, then clearly we cannot forgive the government.”
He revealed that an amount of $1.5 billion was to be allocated to the GETFund to help complete what the government described as essential educational infrastructure.
He said the government had through, a memo to Parliament, stated their resolve to address the number of students who had come on stream following the free SHS policy implementation.
He is, therefore, questioning what the money allocated to GETFund was used for if the community secondary schools have not been completed.
He hinted that the Minority will probe the &1.5 billion security that was approved for the essential education facilities including, the E-Blocks.
Parliament in 2018 approved the amount for the GETFund to support the development of educational infrastructure.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
