Free SHS will collapse next term - Joseph Yamin

A former Deputy Minister in the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC), Hon. Joseph Yamin has predicted government’s flagship policy of free Senior High School (SHS) will collapse by next academic term.

According to him, the inability of the government to pay feeding grants of boarding students in public second cycle institutions across the country indicates the policy cannot be sustained and was introduced for political gain.

Speaking on Kumasi-based Abusua FM , the former Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports stated the Akufo-Addo led government did not make enough preparation before the program was implemented.

“If you look at the challenges now, nobody should tell you that the government did not prepare for the implementation”, the former Deputy Ashanti Regional Minister told host Kwame Adinkra.

“I have my doubt schools will close and reopen without seeing the challenges we are seeing currently”, the aspiring NDC Ashanti Regional chairperson said.

The free SHS policy which was major campaign tool of the current government in 2012 an 2016 respectively, was rolled out in September this year with over 400, 000 beneficiaries.

It has however been characterized by challenges ranging from the unavailability of accommodation, furniture, poor feeding to lack of basic amenities at the implementing institutions.

Some members of the current government including Dr Kwame Amoako Tuffuor, have called on government to take pragmatic steps in addressing challenges the programme is saddled with citing his experience during a visit to one of the schools

“Like school feeding and all that. I once visited a school and witnessed it; there was this young lady I met. At the time, I noticed, she has eating all her food, licked her plate leaving no grain. She didn’t eat her egg on the food either. As I stood to see what see what she was going to do with it, she put her egg in the mouth and brought it out again and put it in her pocket. So I went to her and said, ‘you didn’t eat your egg’. And the reply she gave me was, that is my dinner. At that moment, I wept, ”he said