The Director of Inter-Party and CSO relations for the opposition NDC, Dr Peter Boamah Otokunor, has outlined how the party intends to fund the payment of school fees for first-year university students.

Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on Tuesday, he explained that the Ghana Education Trust (GET) Fund has sufficient resources to support this initiative.

He stated, "Granted that the Fund alone cannot solve this, we believe that if we are able to streamline government expenditure, we will be able to make a lot of resources available for this."

He further elaborated, "For example, the pre-tertiary allocation, of which 96% goes to Free SHS and 70% of that goes into buying food for the students.

"The contracts for the supply of the food go to less than 10 people in this country who buy all the food and distribute it across the country."

Dr Otokunor also mentioned that during an interaction with the youth at the Bukom Boxing Arena on Monday, the NDC flagbearer stated that schools will be empowered to handle their own food supply.

"He said this is a way to reengineer and reactivate the local economy of the areas where the schools are located. All those things, when well-structured, will release more resources," Dr. Otokunor added.

Addressing the cost of the initiative, Dr. Otokunor noted that the average school fees per student amount to about ¢2,500.

"So if you do the costing, you will be looking at ¢250 to ¢300 million, which is roughly about $20 million. The source for this is already there," he said.

He also highlighted that in 2023, GETFund accrued ¢7.9 billion, out of which ¢3.9 billion was allocated to education, with the remaining amount being collateralized.

"We will restructure the collateralised funds and decapping the ¢3.9 billion we are supposed to allocate to rake in more resources for this. If you are paying ¢300 million and you have an annual inflow into a Fund that is about ¢7.9 billion, it should not be a problem," Dr Otokunor stated.

Background
The flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Mahama, has announced that first-year tertiary students will not pay academic fees.

According to him, this initiative is part of the government’s effort to lessen the financial burden on parents funding their children's education.

"We will implement a no-fees stress programme to alleviate the financial burden on parents and students in financing tertiary education.

"We will implement a no academic fees policy at the university for level 100 students," Mahama said during the NDC’s manifesto reading on August 12.

Additionally, Mr Mahama noted that the party will redeploy the Student Loan Trust Fund to give continuing students the option to utilise student loans to finance their university fees directly, ensuring that students can focus on their studies with peace of mind.