The Minority Leader of Parliament, Alexander Kwamena Afenyo-Markin, doubts the commitment of the Mahama administration in fulfilling its pledge to absorbing admission fees of first year students at public universities.
Speaking on the floor of Parliament during the approval of some vetted ministerial nominees on Tuesday the Leader of the Minority couldn’t understand why parents and students have had to struggle to pay admission fees of first year students when the government had promised to bear the costs.
Referencing the response to the Education Minister nominee, Haruna Iddrisu, who indicated that government will reimburse students who have already paid their admission fees in the course of the year, Afenyo-Markin asked the rationale behind such a position.
“The Honourable Haruna Iddrisu has told us that students who have paid their admission fees already will have same refunded to them. It begs the question, why didn’t government ask the universities not to demand the fees from the students since the state will pay for them in the coming months?” he quizzed.
He further explained the necessity for the government to have asked the universities not to demand the admission fees since not all students or parents maybe able to raise the fees due to financial constraints.
“Mr. Speaker, my point of digression with the Education Minister nominee has to do with the fact that not every student or parents can raise the admission fees and would have hoped that this policy of the state paying the fees of first year students would have materialized so that they could take advantage of it” he said.
“So if a student or parents maybe is unable to raise the admission fee, it simply means that that student cannot go to school because of his or her inability to raise the admission fee. It is upon this that we on this side are raising eyebrows about the commitment of the government to fulfill this pledge”
He indicated that it was a simple matter of the government asking universities to hold on with their asking students to pay admission fees since the state is bearing those costs for students.
The Minority Leader called on the government to expedite the process of working out a comprehensive plan to ensure that students are not shortchanged and disadvantaged because of financial difficulties and the government’s failure to live up to expectations.