Deputy Finance Minister, Fiifi Kwetey, has thrown a challenge to persons behind publications that he has enrolled as a student pursuing a Masters programme which is taking his time away from his office and negatively affecting the performance of the government. Describing the allegation as one of “the usual concoctions” of newspapers sympathetic to the New Patriotic Party, he said there is no iota of truth in the claim that he is in school or pursing any academic programme presently, either in Ghana or abroad, explaining that if he so wanted, he would have pursued and obtained a Masters degree a long time ago when he obtained his first degree. Fiifi Kwetey, who was speaking to Radio Gold on Monday in reaction to a publication on Monday that an unnamed Deputy Finance Minister was schooling at the expense of his duties at the Ministry, along with Deputy Information Ministers, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa and James Agyenim Boateng, said he would rather have members of government pursue further academic honours than they lying about their certificates when they indeed do not have any to show. “There’s nothing wrong, to begin with, if any member of government decides to pursue additional knowledge. It’s better. It’s better for them to do so than for them to come and lie that their certificates have been carried by the ‘tsunami’ such as we had in the time of the NPP,” he retorted, in apparent reference to ex-Greater Accra Regional Minister in the Kufuor regime, Sheikh I.C. Quaye, who appeared before a parliamentary vetting committee vetting his nomination for appointment as regional minister, and claimed that heavy floods that swept his residence at Alajo, a suburb of Accra, also took away his educational certificates. Fiifi Kwetey said education is an everyday affair and something one builds up on a daily basis, insisting that going to school and taking certification is an integral part of the education, “but it is by no means the only way at all” so the real education, for him, is the day-to-day practical learning – interaction with people in the Ministry – that is the most important thing. Story by Isaac Yeboah/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana