Government to allocate GHC1 billion to Free SHS in 2018 – Bawumia

The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has revealed that government will allocate GHC1 billion to the ongoing free SHS programme in 2018.

He made this known in Tamale Senior High School during the Northern Region launch of the Free Senior High School initiative.

Addressing school Heads of the region at Tamasco, the Vice President touted the free education policy as a unique opportunity which subsequent generations will adore.

According to him, this initiative by the Akufo-Addo-led administration was a well-thought through policy being implemented as government’s flagship programme to shore up the nation’s human resource base.

Dr. Bawumia thus reassured the nation that government will strive to sustain the policy against all odds, urging beneficiaries to dispel the propaganda being churn out by saboteurs against the free SHS policy.

“We didn’t think that is something that is going to be cheap. Next year we will spend about a billion Ghana cedis on free SHS. That is money that is worth spending and we’ll keep on spending it and we’ll spend it again because it is important; it was our pride and so we’ll do it,” he said.

According to him, there is 94% of students intake across-board as compared to 70% recorded last year.

Meanwhile, the Minority in Parliament has described the current programme as a sham, saying it was not what was promised Ghanaians in 2016.

The NDC lawmakers told a news conference in Accra that the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) had promised to roll out a free SHS on a “universal basis” but that is not what has happened.

The Minority is displeased a total number of 565,404 continuing students across the country have been sidelined in the programme.