The West African Examination Council (WAEC) fears that the release of this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results may be delayed due to the government’s outstanding debt of GH₵166 million.

According to WAEC's Head of Public Affairs, John Kapi, the council owes invigilators, supervisors, and script checkers over GH₵4 million.

Speaking to JoyNews, Mr Kapi stated that the government has only paid one-third of WAEC’s 2024 budget of GH₵186 million, leaving unpaid arrears of GH₵40.4 million from previous years.

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He expressed concern that if these arrears are not cleared on time, it could delay the release of the WASSCE results.

"When it comes to the WASSCE, we still have quite a lot of money to collect. The fees for 2024 stood at 186.437 million Ghana cedies. Now, before the commencement of the examination, the government paid us 60.976 million. 

“And so that's all that we got. And that represented just about a third of the amount. So the rest of the two-thirds has still not been paid. And we still have some outstanding from 2023. That's about 40.4 million. 

“So if you put these two together, we are hitting around 165.9 million Ghana cedies that we expect the government to provide for us so that we can conclude our activities for the year successfully. 

“If for some reason they are not assured of payment and they choose to keep the scripts, then it is possible that the results will be delayed,” he warned.

In response, the Education Ministry has assured the public it is working with WAEC to prevent any delay.

The spokesperson of the Ministry, Kwasi Kwarteng stated that GH₵15 million was recently released to WAEC, and further payments are being processed to ensure that WASSCE results are released on time.

“That's why I want to take the opportunity to even assure our parents, our candidates who wrote the exam, that nothing is going to change. We do not believe it will get to a situation where WAEC will say they are delaying the release of student results. 

“We have a relationship with WAEC. We have been working with WAEC at every point, the government will owe WAEC because the government does not pay WAEC before..... WAEC will have to finish their work before the government pays. So certainly, there will be outstanding financial obligations,” he added.