Free Senior High School (SHS) Education is an aspiration provided for in the 1992 constitution of Ghana, article 25 (1)(b) which gives a mandatory obligation for free secondary education to be introduced progressively.
For this reason, Free SHS was launched and implemented progressively by His Excellency the former president John Dramani Mahama on September 17th 2015 at which time government expected to absorb over 320,000 day student into the programme (Fact-checkghana.com).
According to resourcegovernance.org, Free SHS is funded through ANNUAL BUDGET FUNDING AMOUNT (ABFA) derived from our OIL REVENUE. However, Citizens in any nation pay taxes in order to increase government revenue to bring more development to his people.
In order to enhance tax payment in this country, the Nana Akufo-Addo led governing NPP must be able to account for the resources including all other taxes collected from these citizens.
The question here is, ‘Should citizens continue to pay taxes when they can’t feel the value for money they had already paid or should the government continue to impose more taxes on the already over burdened citizenry?’
There is a viral video created by the New Juaben South Member of Parliament (MP) in the person of Michael Okyere Baafi, indicating that Free SHS will be cancelled by the NPP government if E-Levy is not approved.
The Hon. MP must understand that Ghanaians are already overburdened with numerous taxes and cannot afford to pay the E-Levy which the people are even struggling to identify the category of tax the E-Levy belongs.
It is an established fact that, the Free SHS already has a funding source. Besides, it is also proposed that, if the country is broke the NPP government should go to IMF and select from their numerous bailout packages.
In addition, Ghanaians are also pleading with the government to cut down the luxurious, unnecessary, and reckless spending of the President to enable him meet other necessary and important expenditures.
It is therefore envisaged, that the NPP government is only adopting a strategy to cancel the Free Senior High School Programme and blame it on the suspension of the E-levy.
Already, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta had indicated some time ago the cancellation of the Free SHS programme because according to him, the programm is a drain on the consolidated Fund. We want the government to be bold enough to tell Ghanaians its can’t continue any further with the free SHS (shambolic implementation).
The Nana-Addo government within five years had borrowed more than GH230 billion and had also acquired more than GH200 billion tax revenue. Also, the World Bank gave Ghana $435 million to fight Covid-19 which activities included communication campaign, sensitization campaign, equipping labs, equipping new facilities to receive patients, to treat patients yet he failed to showcase his real achievements for all these.
If there is anything at all, the Hon. MP, Okyere Baafi should be telling us/Ghanaians how Ghana’s resources had been managed within this five years by his government. The MP should know by now that Ghanaians are rather interested in the government accounting to them on the use of their resources and borrowed monies.
For the NPP government’s information, Ghanaians are not ready to pay the obnoxious E-LEVY, it’s more like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Dometey Moses Tettey (Bola Ray Jnr)
Youth Activist
HP: 0246969345
21st February, 2022
Source: Nationaltymes.com
