"83 SHSs delay reopening due to lack of feeding grant"

This was the title to one of the news items that greeted Ghanaians yesterday, 01/14/14. The first two paragraphs to this news read like this;

"All the 83 Senior High Schools (SHSs) in the three regions of northern Ghana have partially re-opened by admitting only final-year students.

The inability of the SHSs to admit all students on the re-opening day is as a result of the non-payment of two terms’ feeding subsidies owed them by the government.The affected schools include: 44 in the Northern Region, 23 in the Upper East Region and 16 in the Upper West Region."

I sympathize with the children who have to sit home due to the government inability to disburse the money needed to feed these students as boarding students but we have to revisit this policy and analyze it as it if it is serving the needs of those people it was crafted to help.

First, can we continue to finance this policy at a time when the government is struggling even to meet the basic infrastructure need of the country?

Second, we have had this policy for the past fifty years and more and it is time to cancel this policy entirely or at least eliminate the subsidy on the feeding portion. It is better for these students to be in school now as DAY STUDENTS instead of BOARDING STUDENTS and lose valuable time sitting home when they could be in the classrooms as day students.

The time has come for this discriminatory policy to be scrapped and replaced with one that meets our need at this moment. We have poor people in all the ten regions of the country and to continue to subsidize students from the three Northern Regions breed contempt amongst the populace when we have most of our Ministers and President from the North who depended on this policy to successfully achieve their academic goals. This policy was not enacted to continue for ever and the time has come for the Northerners to get off the gravy train and assume the responsibility in educating their children.

This dependency syndrome that breeds laziness and irresponsibility mentality ought to be discouraged and People should not be marrying three or four wives with ten children when they are in no position to educate them from their own pockets.

The government should build day secondary schools as the boarding schools have become too expensive for ordinary Ghanaians to afford and if any parent in the North wants to enrol their child or children in the boarding schools, then they should be made to pay for the boarding expenses.

President Mahama recently intoned that, the era of free things is past and cancelled the allowances for Teacher Training and Nursing students. He should use the same stick to tell his tribesmen in the North that, the government cannot continue to be the parents for their children feeding fees so either they enrol their children as DAY STUDENTS or board them and pay for their feeding because Ghanaians are tired of paying to educate other people children.

My hope is that, the new two hundred (200) secondary schools Mahama intends building are DAY SECONDARY schools as the boarding schools have become too expensive for the farmers, Fishermen, Teachers, Nurses etc to enrol their children. Education is important for our development and we should make it accessible to many people and the best way to do this is to have many Day secondary schools for the poor parents to get their wards educated.

Justice Sarpong

(CARDINAL of TRUTH)