The Ministry of Education has refuted claims by former President Mahama that government had abandoned some Community Day Senior High School projects commenced under his administration.
A statement released by the Ministry clarified that the Mpaha Community Day Senior High School in the Savanna Region where the former President made the comments had not been abandoned.
In an interview with Citi News, Public Relations Officer of the Ministry, Ekow Vincent Assafuah expressed government’s commitment towards the completion of E-blocks that are not ready for use.
“As at December 2016, when President John Dramani Mahama was leaving the reins of government, the particular project that he mentioned was about 65% completed. It was not at the level that he left it. Today, he went there and it was at the level that it was because a particular government came and that government completed the project.”
“The fire extinguishers that he pointed to, those extinguishers were not there when he was leaving the reins of government so I am surprised. We completed this project in mid July 2019. We have done a technical inspection and handing over has been done. We were in this country when the government went to Parliament to go and secure a 1.5 billion from GETFund securitization. These monies are supposed to be used to fund such projects that he himself was not able to give budgetary allocations to.”
Mr. Mahama who spearheaded the start of work on the 200 Community Day Schools condemned the decision by the government to stop paying for ongoing projects and refuse to open up for use of many completed projects.
“In my round touring communities across the country, I have drawn attention to the criminal abandonment of projects and this is one very good example. This is an almost complete project of Secondary School and Community Day School…you can even see fire extinguishers installed and ready to go…this is one of the 23 World Bank-funded project,” he told journalists.
“If you go across the country you will find them at different stages of completion…some are almost completed yet they remain unoccupied. If you look at the children in that community and its surrounding communities they have to travel several kilometres to go get secondary education when a secondary school is at their doorstep,” he said.