Minister of Education, Matthew Opoku Prempeh
It is amazing how political office holders, stakeholders and people whom the average Ghanaian has trusted them with the affairs of the state tend to forget about the welfare of these people and take actions that are favourable to them only.
In recent times, political leaders and government officials have constantly broken their sworn oath of office without been prosecuted and continue to do so,our legislative body has been turned into a rubber stamp legislature where decisions are taken to favour political parties and their executives but not the Ghanaians.
Barely eight(8) months ago,the New Patriotic Party(NPP) in their manifesto promised a free secondary School education for all our Ghanaian students at the senior high level and today they are expediting actions to ensure that promised is actualised.
Last Thursday,the Honourable Minister of education, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh at a Press Conference answering questions in relation with the Free Senior High School Education Policy made mention that," students held back during their secondary education for
non performance will not be catered for in their extra year of study under the Free Senior high school education policy".
This statement by the Minister has attracted rebukes and allegations from some political figures who accuse the government for diverting from their promise. This situation is appalling and nothing good to write home about. The NPP in their campaign period made their policies known to us, to some extent including the amount of money allocated to each policy and promise.Now anyone who is well informed to criticize the Minister's statement must be knowledgeable enough to know that the country run a three year duration of education at the secondary School level and it's based on this time frame that the government formulated this policy and allocated funds to actualise it.In short,the policy was to cater for the 3 years study of secondary school students and by that they are fulfilling their promise.
Note,this is not to say that what the Minister said was totally right,but that was what the NPP government promised us. The question we should be aking as concerned citizens is that,what provision is the government making for student's with disabilities who through no fault of theirs may have to repeat their class and hence stay for additional years at school.
These leaders who have sworn to serve the country must through history learn that, no person or government is a repository of knowledge and that we all need the advice and guidance of others, therefore government officials who claim to work for the good of the country, and noticed loop holes in the Minister's statement should have suggested other options to ensure that the privilege and right of challenged students who may be held back for no reason known to them is not trempled and violated through the actualization of this policy.
However, these leaders due to greed and their thirst for political powers are using all nefarious means to undermine this policy for their personal gain.
It is about time our leaders told us the truth and work harder towards the development of Ghana but not their pockets and stomachs.The Minister of education did not say anything opposite to what they promised us, so every Tom,Dick and Harry must come together?,with Ghana's interest at heart, work to ensure that every citizen who is entitled to this policy enjoys it fully.
The TRUTH must always be told.
