Flagbearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) John Dramani Mahama has debunked claims that he will abolish the free Senior High School (SHS) programme being implemented by the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) if he comes to power.
The former President explained that he has never been against the policy.
He, however, said the current mode of implementation has consistently created problems for both students and their parents.
Addressing the King of Dagbon during a courtesy call, Mr. Mahama chastised the government for failing to complete the 200-day schools started by his administration, leading to the double-track system currently being implemented under the free SHS programme.
“Free Senior High School education has come to stay. If anybody tells you that I, John Dramani Mahama, son of E.A Mahama will abolish Free SHS when I come, tell the person he is a bloody liar. What I am against is the poor implementation of the free SHS which is creating great inconvenience for the parents, for the students and for the teachers and the point I have made is that we can make it better.”
“If this government had followed our plan of continuing with the 200 new Senior High Schools that we were building, we will not have the current situation that we have in our free SHS plan.”
This is not the first time the former President has declared his support for the free SHS policy
In 2019, Mr. Mahama refuted the NPP’s claims that the NDC will cancel the free SHS policy should they return to the office.
He admitted that Free SHS is here to stay and cannot be reversed by any government.
John Mahama had said that a future NDC government will hold stakeholder consultations to address the bottlenecks confronting the smooth implementation of the policy.
His remarks were in response to President Nana Akufo-Addo’s claims that a return of the NDC would mean a cancellation of the Free SHS policy.
