The Vice-President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, has decried the "reckless spending" by the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) which has resulted in a debt overhang of GH¢166,341,797. He said the overspending, which happened between 2007 and 2008, "occurred through imprudence and misguided spending, including uncritical indulgence of and payment for outrageous fluctuations in construction cost". Mr Mahama was opening a two-day GETFund stakeholders' consultative forum at Sogakope in the Volta Region yesterday. The forum, attended by vice-chancellors, principals of colleges, financial controllers and representatives of the Ghana Education Service and the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education, was to take stock of the nine-year implementation of the GETFund and strategize on how to improve its disbursements. Mr Mahama said the overspending was generated from the Ministry of Education and GETFund management and administration. He said the universities were equally at fault, as the bulk of the financial excesses occurring in procurement related to activities such as vehicle purchases, textbook supplies and construction. He expressed dissatisfaction that nine years into the operation, of GETFund “we have not as a country been able to deal with the dismal state of infrastructure, particularly those at the basic level.” Besides, he said, there was "shabby treatment" of vocational and technical education and lack of a sustainable strategic focus on the teaching and learning of science and mathematics. Mr Mahama therefore, called for a paradigm shift in the allocation of resources from GETFund to basic education, especially science especially science, mathematics, vocational and technical education. "There is also the need to take a hard look at money guzzling projects, uncompleted projects, abandoned projects, projects with huge expectations and time overruns and lack of standard design structures" especially at the pre-tertiary level," he said. He urged the participants to reconfigure the structure and patterns of allocations and spending of the GETFund by taking into consideration the principles of equity, need and regional balance in the provision of educational infrastructure. He also asked them to consider the discrepancies between annual approval by Parliament and actual releases from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, disproportionately large share of public sector universities and expenditure overruns and dis¬regard for actual allocation of resources. The Chairman of the GETFund Board of Trustees, Dr Kwabena Adjei, said over the last nine years the GETFund had disbursed GH¢923.4 million, with 43 per cent of that disbursement going to the tertiary sub-sector. He said the total allocation to tertiary institutions was GH¢384.3 million, yet spending stood at GH¢396.9 million, with public universities’ spending representing 73.86 per cent. Dr. Adjei, therefore, urged the participants to look at the kind of investments to be made at the tertiary level, such that we do not compromise on expanding access and improving quality at the basic and second-cycle levels of education. The Minister of Education, Mr. Alex Tettey-Enyo, charged the GETFund administration to look at ways of raising funds, instead of "total reliance on the Value Added tax (VAT) revenue". He called for an effective relationship between his ministry and the GETFund administration to ensure prudence in the management of the fund. Source: Daily Graphic