The Ghana Scholarships Secretariat has trained deans of the Metropolitan Municipal and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) of the 16 regions on the online application system it wants to introduce by next month.
The exercise took place at the Oak Plaza Hotel in Accra.
It saw experts take the deans through how the online system would operate, and how the deans, being the supervisors of the scholarship process at the localities, would be familiar with its usage.
In his opening remarks, the Registrar of the Ghana Scholarships Secretariat, Mr. Kingsley Agyemang noted that the Secretariat deemed it very important to have that stakeholders’ engagement before it did the national deployment from next week.
According to him, there were a lot of issues that had to do with the manual system which included misspelling of names, student identity numbers, and even completion of an excel template was a challenge.
He opined that the main objective of the system of digitization or the e-system of scholarship, was to increase accessibility no matter where the person found himself or herself.
He explained that with the new system, one could sit in a comfort zone, go online to apply, adding that there is a good bonding system where any person chosen a guarantor has the opportunity to verify before the system allows the applicant to proceed.
He added further that the new system that has been included in the aptitude test, where every applicant must go through, following which the applicant would have to proceed to the district selected to have an interview.
The interview, which would have seven-panel members, would be scored online and would reflect on the national database. After all the process, applicants would be chosen based on their score, from the highest till the funds allocated for that particular academic year runs out.
“This is to increase transparency. This is to increase trust in the awarding system. And I am happy to announce to you that when this system which we have envisaged goes on well, it will be the best in Africa. Again, it is not just the scholarship at the local level. As was announced in the media some two weeks ago when some unscrupulous persons attempted to forge the signature of the registrar of scholarships and currently assisting the security agencies in the investigation.”
“This time around the system for the foreign front will have a visa interface where all the embassies here in Ghana would have an interface. The award letters we are going to generate will have an electronic awards so if Kingsley Agyeman appears to submit his form to the US Embassy, the US Embassy would just query from their system the scholarship number and check to see if electronic this is an award that has been issued by the Ghana Scholarship Secretariat,” he added.
Some of the Deans expressed happiness with the decision by the Secretariat to involve them in the process before the national deployment, as well as training them to be familiar with the online process before its launch.