Actual picture of 200 SHS project not being told – Kweku Baako

Veteran Journalist, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako, has said the actual picture of the construction of 200 community senior high schools promised by government is not being told Ghanaians.

According to him, the NDC government can neither deliver the 200 or 123 schools, as has continuously been touted by official government and party communicators.

Kweku Baako described as disappointing President John Mahama’s inability to offer details on his promised 200 in his State of the Nation Address.

He believes it would have been better for the President to have showed some pictorial evidence of the supposed 123 schools under construction aside the four completed ones, as often touted by government communicators.

President John Mahama in his last State of the Nation Address in Parliament Thursday made reference to the four completed schools and the 123 others government claims are at different stages of completion. The 200 schools project was a major election campaign by Mr. Mahama during the 2012 electioneering.

Speaking on News File on Joy FM Saturday, the Editor -in- Chief of the new Crusading Guide newspaper challenged government to provide evidence of the 123 projects, if indeed they exist.

“What the President said was only a repetition of what the official government and party communicators have repeated over and over again in the last few months. 123 schools at various levels of completion…what does that mean. That one didn’t have the evidence-based that we had seen earlier…give us locations, when it comes to the roads they mention the areas, so you know it is in this zone so you are able to double check. Persistently all we are told is 123 schools at various stages of completion; it is meaningless. Because it’s been said over and over again, I was thinking because the President had decided to go in that direction, he’ll offer something of evidential value to back it, but to repeat what the communicators have been telling us all the time…I was really disappointed”.

He added: “They are not going to be able to deliver neither the 200 or 120 schools, that is not going to happen and there are good reasons for that, people must be straightforward with us. In the original estimates, they faced serious budgetary constraints and so there have been variations in terms of the original costing. So they are delivering this project at a higher cost based on the new variation that is why there is limited delivery. Even building fifty schools is good enough, so they should let some integrity come to the communication”.