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You don't have to lie to be relevant: Okudzeto to Opoku Prempeh

By Justice Kofi Bimpeh
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Former Deputy Minister of Education Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa says the current Minister of Education Mathew Opoku Prempeh does not need to peddle falsehood to be seen as relevant or working for Ghana.

Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said the response of the sector minister when he appeared before Parliament this week to answer questions regarding the implementation of the Free SHS policy was false and blatant distortion.

Education Minister Mathew Opoku Prempeh said the former NDC government did not provide funds for its progressively free SHS policy and also scholarships which were announced for needy SHS students were no where to be traced.

Reacting to the comments of the sector minister on Radio Gold's "Alhaji&Alhaji", Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa said all the comments by the minister is false.

“The NDC Government began the implementation of the Progressively Free Programme in the 2015/2016 academic year. For the first term of the programme, Government released all funds being 12.78 million Ghana Cedis. This covered the period September to December 2015.The second release of 17 million Ghana Cedis was effected for the second term covering January to April 2016.”

According to him, the Minister would have been accurate if he had stated that they inherited arrears but to say that the NDC Government was not committed to the Progressively Free Programme and therefore did not provide a "farthing" is to dabble in falsehood and absolutely mislead Parliament.

On the scholarship scheme the former minister said After almost a year in office, the Honourable Minister [Mathew Opoku Prempeh] ought to have known that the Scholarship Scheme for 10,400 students under the World Bank supported $156 million Secondary Education Improvement Programme (SEIP), is administered by a team at the Ghana Education Service under the leadership of Mrs Dorothy Glover and not by the Scholarship Secretariat.

 

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