The vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumiah has asked the former president John Dramani Mahama not to blame his incompetence on the Free SHS policy.
According to the Vice President, even without Free SHS, the former president cancelled trainees’ allowances, put a freeze on public sector employment, could not pay contactors, collapsed NHIS among others.
He asked whether the former president could not do all of these albeit taxing every sector of the economy including condoms and cutlasses because of free SHS.
Mahama on Free SHS
The former President John Mahama has taking every single opportunity to take a swipe at the Free SHS policy. He recently expressed frustration with the large intake of students under the programme.
He said that the huge influx of students would affect the quality of public schools.
Speaking at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) in the Central Region during an NDC organised lecture on the state of education in Ghana, Mr. Mahama stated that “what we are doing with this huge influx into the secondary school system [due to the free SHS programme] is going to affect the quality of the public schools.”
He went on to predict doom for the pro-poor policy, saying, “and soon we are going to find a system where people lose faith in public schools and everybody will pay to take their wards to private secondary schools. That is the danger we are talking about.”
No room for Hypocrisy
But addressing some supporters of the New Patriotic Party at Kwahu Obo, Dr. Bawumia stated that the government in the wake of the free SHS policy which is so loathed by the former president is still abolishing taxes, paying trainees allowances, industrializing the economy and has defreeze the public sector.
He said government will not succumb to blind criticisms from the opposition which he described as hypocritical.
“We will leave no room for hypocrisy. We have not yet finished. There is more to be done but we don’t want to listen to those who tell us that free SHS is not good, teacher and nurses trainee allowance is not good, NABCO is not good. No! We are going to follow the vision of the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo,” he said.
He asked “I hear somebody [former President Mahama] says we are spending so much on free SHS. Have you heard him? He said we are spending so much so we won’t have money for other things. Did you hear that?”
“You who said free SHS was not possible. When you did not have free SHS under your government, you couldn’t pay teachers and nursing training allowance, you couldn’t pay National Health Insurance, is it free SHS which stopped you?
“I’m from the North. I benefitted from free education. It is good for the people of the north and it is good for the people of Ghana,” he said
NPP Youth Walk
The Vice President, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia was at Kwahu to join several hundreds of youth of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) at Kwahu in the Eastern Region for a health walk and a mini-rally.
The event was also used to launch the Eastern Regional youth wing of the party.
The walk was attended by several big wigs of the party as well as some government appointees.
Source: The Evening Mail
