UG students petition Speaker of Parliament over ‘killer’ fees

Some concerned students of the University of Ghana have formally petitioned the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Mike Oquaye over what they describe as exorbitant academic fees being charged by the school.

The students are accusing the university authorities of arbitrarily increasing fees every new academic year, a situation they say compounds the hardship they have been enduring.

They want Parliament to scrutinise the fees before the university is allowed to bill students.

The petition was also copied to the Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education.

Receiving the petition on behalf of the Speaker, Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, who is also the chairman of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee Mahama Ayariga asked public universities to comply with the law by submitting their proposed fees to Parliament.

He said: “My committee is meeting on Thursday and I want to assure you that I will present the petition to the entire committee for its consideration and you will hear from us. But I want to assure you that parliament has already raised the issue of the need for the universities through the Ministry of Finance to bring their proposed fees for consideration. We have not yet received that from the Ministry of Finance. We have some information that some universities have started submitting their proposed fees to the National Council for Tertiary Education, I believe for onward transmission to the Minister of Education and then Minister of Finance.”

He continued: “Now I want to join you to appeal to the universities to comply with the law and present their proposed fees to parliament for consideration. I believe that if they move fast with some demonstration of good fate, the committee might sit during recess to consider proposals so that when parliament is recalled for any other business, there will be opportunity to re-lay it.”