Colleges of Education to shut down over lack of funds to feed students

• Public Colleges of Education has threatened to shut down citing government's failure to disburse students maintenance funds

• The situation, they say, has led the suppliers halting supplies to the Colleges

• Government has been asked to do the needful; failure to do so would lead to the shutdown of colleges

Principals of the 46 Public Colleges of Education have served notice that they will be left with no option other than to ask their students to go home if the government fails to make available grants for the maintenance of students' stay on campus after a week.

Speaking in an interview with JoyNews monitored by GhanaWeb, the President of the Conference of Principals of Colleges of Education, Mr Emmanuel Nyamekye noted that the government since the beginning of the current academic year in January has not released any funds for students maintenance, including feeding.

According to Mr Nyamekye, having tried their best to manage the situation to date, the principals of the various colleges have no option than to ask their students to go home if the government does not salvage the situation as a matter of urgency.

“If nothing is done in the next couple of weeks, we may be compelled to ask our students to go home,” he said.

He noted that suppliers of food items to the colleges owing to the development have, as far back as the first semester, ceased sending supplies due to arrears owed them.

“Once the suppliers fail to supply, there’s very little we can do under the circumstance.”

“We cannot go to the open market and buy so our suppliers have the trump card and until we get some money to at least appease them, they would not give us any food items and when that happens, we can’t feed our students,” he highlighted.

In his view, the closure of the colleges must be prevented from occurring as the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has already disrupted the academic calendar and activities.

“Our students are such that once they miss even a meal, they would think that it is the principal who has failed or refused to feed them and they wouldn’t take kindly to that at all.”

“We wouldn’t want the colleges to get into that kind of situation where we would have problems with our students.”

“So the best option for us would be for the students to go home unless something is done now for us to be able to keep our students in school,” he stated.