Amount spent on 11 GETFund beneficiaries can sponsor 1,500 Legon students – Afrifa-Mensah

The host of Happy 98.9FM’s Epa Hoa Daben, Okatakyie Afrifa-Mensah has taken pains to compare and contrast the fees of persons sponsored abroad under the GETFund to that of the newly admitted student in the University of Ghana- Legon.

Upon comparison of only 11 fees out of 88 of GETFund beneficiaries, it was identified that their fees when converted into cedis could pay the education of a total of 1,500 entrants into Ghana’s premier university.

On the Epa Hoa Daben show, an angry Afrifa-Mensah dedicated his rant, slamming the Secretariat for its decision to award foreign scholarship for courses that could be studied in Ghana.

He, however, could not make sense of the decision to pump money into foreign universities at a time when Ghanaian universities are struggling and those universities offer the same program.

According to Afrifa-Mensah, persons who used their positions to obtain GETfund scholarships in the past should be made to pay back the sponsorship fees to the state.

He also asserted that, even though they could not be blamed for securing the scholarships, they should, out of good conscience, payback since they were not needy students as stipulated by the Act of the scholarship scheme.

It has emerged that some MPs and government officials were given scholarships from the GETfund scholarship secretariat to embark on courses abroad.

The mandate of the GETFund is to grant scholarships to brilliant but needy Ghanaians.

The list including some members of parliament and deputy ministers are contained in the audited report of the auditor general on the Getfund scholarship secretariat.

The Dome MP and procurement minister Adwoa Safo applied and obtained $12,800 in allowances with $17,004 in tuition fees to study at the Harvard Kennedy school.

The Executive Secretary of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), Prince Hamidu Armah also received £38,400 for living expense in addition to £33,000 for tuition fees, While Education minister Mathew Opoku Prempeh, who listed at number 38, is receiving $12,800 for living expenses and $11,200 as tuition fees at security course at Harvard University.

The Education Minister and the Executive Secretary of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment have explained they secured the scholarship before coming into public office.