The Convention People’s Party says it believes that Ghana has enough money to offer free education for its people and that the only difficulty in achieving this feat has to do with the priorities of leaders of the nation. Successive governments have maintained that Ghana is poor, a condition the erstwhile Kufuor-led administration used to back its claims of declaring Ghana a Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC). “CPP does not believe or accept that Ghana is a poor country” and would therefore ensure that all “children compulsorily stay in school till age eighteen and the cost will be borne by the state,” Madam Naa Kordai Addy, CPP Shadow Cabinet member for Social Welfare, stated at a Press Briefing on Wednesday. She was addressing journalists at the 5th in the series of ‘HOW CPP WILL DO IT’ media briefings held at the CPP headquarters in Accra. The programme is designed to present alternative policy visions on key areas of governance to the Ghanaian public. Madam Addy explained that to make free, compulsory education possible, a CPP government would set up Social Welfare departments in all District Assemblies in the country and support them with decent budgets to carry out this duty. “When the person is educated, three-quarters of your work is done,” she stressed. The CPP shadow cabinet member also stated that alternative options in vocational education such as fish farming would be introduced to equip students with skills that would ensure they grow to become self-sufficient adults. She was certain that a government under the CPP would pursue an economic development agenda that creates jobs instead of promoting one that targets inflation and cuts government spending on social welfare programmes as the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) and ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) governments have done consistently in the last eighteen years. Naa Kordei Addy said this move would cure social dysfunctions such as prostitution and homosexuality, which she believes most girls and boys have resorted to because their options have run out. By: Dorcas Efe Mensah/myjoyonline.com/Ghana