General News of Monday, 6 February 1995

Source: --

CHASS HAS NO POWER...TO FIX FEES

The Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) has no mandate whatsoever to fix boarding fees, the Ghana Education Service (GES) said yesterday in Accra.

Consequently, the GES has declared the purported increase in the feeding fee from c400 to c800 announced by CHASS as unauthorised and therefore of no effect.

According to the GES, studies have shown that the Scholarships Secretariat would require an additional c5 million to supplement its financial commitment to scholarship holders this year, if the increase from c400 to c800 per student per day as proposed by the CHASS is accepted, it emphasised.

On the issue that the GES had failed to respond to several memoranda submitted by CHASS over the issue, the statement explained that following a memorandum received from CHASS, the GES set up a committee to reappraise the cost of feeding in line with current prices of food items and other related services.

The feeding fee was increased from c200 to c400 per student per day from the beginning of the 1993/94 academic year.