The Education Ministry has defended its decision to select KA Technologies as the sole distributor of laptops under the 'one teacher-one laptop' initiative.

Spokesperson for the Education Ministry, Kwasi Kwarteng, told JoyNews that the Ministry’s checks found that KA Technologies was the best option for the teachers.

"If you look at the proposal, you'd realise that in terms of the company choice and in terms of price arrangement, everything had already been done. They made one reference point in their proposal I think it’s important for all Ghanaians to know."

"Between 2012 and 2016, a similar project was undertaken by government and the cost per laptop was GHc3,500. If you look at the specs comparatively, it’s not even up to the laptops that these proposals sought to get for them and so for them, in terms of price justification, it made sense that they go for these laptops."

Mr Kwarteng added that "government also did our own checks and of course if you had the proposal entries, as a government, you are also moving in or aligning to transform the education; you are talking about science, technology, engineering and maths. It was in order."

Under the One teacher-One laptop policy, the government required that teachers pay 30 percent of the cost of GHS 1,550 through deductions from their salaries while it paid 70 percent.

It would be recalled that on Wednesday, hundreds of teachers went out on the streets of Accra to protest the deal. The teachers insisted the laptops were not fit for purpose and demanded a refund of their monies.

During the demonstration, aggrieved members of the All Teachers' Alliance Ghana (ATAG) protested government’s decision to deduct an amount of GH¢509 from the teachers’ professional development allowance to fund the policy.

They levelled allegations against the Education Ministry and the GES for failing to engage their leaders prior to the introduction of the policy, while blaming their leadership for not being proactive.

“We need our money back, we don’t want the laptop any longer; they are not of good quality [so] we don’t want, we want our money back. The issue is we were not consulted. There has to be a mutual understanding [but] there wasn’t.”

“We will sue them because I have a better laptop. How could [they] force on me an inferior type of laptop and you think I should be happy? If you want to take me for a fool, I will tell you that I am not a fool. If you have a car and somebody buys an inferior car for you and forces you to pay for that car, would you be happy?” they quizzed.