GHc6m Free SHS cash missing

President John Dramani Mahama in an enhanced photo with his free SHS project designs

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Trobu, Moses Anim, yesterday revealed in parliament that the Select Committee on Education approved GHc18 million to cover the supposed school fees of first-year day students entering senior high school in the 2015/2016 academic year.

However, the government released GHc12 million and so the NPP MP had questioned the whereabouts of the remaining GHc6 million.

“The government said it will be able to pay GHc38 per student as fee and in addition pay extra GHc20 to cover the admission fee of each student, making the total cost for the 320,488 day students GHc18 million, but all first-years have been admitted while it has only paid GHc38 per student out of the approved fee of GHc400 for each day student, making GHc12 million, so where is the remaining GHc6 million which has been approved by parliament?” the Trobu MP queried.

Mr Moses Anim therefore called on parliament to as a matter of urgency, invite the finance minister to come and explain why he had not disbursed the money approved for the students.

The MP made the revelation in his contribution to the debate on the 2016 budget statement of government.

He also revealed that official documentations available to him indicated that the 2015 budget for the ministry of education was overblown by a whopping amount of over GHc300 million and would like parliament to also investigate that.

According to him, the ministry of education brought an amount of GHc6.74 billion to the committee level to defend as its budgeted expenditure for 2015, but the budget statement and the Medium Term Expenditure Framework for the ministry for 2015-2017 stated that the actual budgeted money for the ministry’s expenditure, which had been captured in the Appropriation Bill, was GHc7.05 billion.

He questioned why the amount could jump to such a figure which had been captured in the Appropriation Bill.

“We as a parliament have an oversight responsibility to ensure that the public purse is protected so we must see it as very important to investigate these discrepancies in the ministry of education’s budget for 2015,” he said.