A former Minister for Trade and Industry, Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, under the erstwhile Mahama administration has posited that the NDC was never against Free SHS as suggested by members of the governing NPP.

According to him, the opposition National Democratic Congress only said it was going to be difficult to implement the policy.

He said: “we didn’t tag-free SHS as something that is not desirable. We only said it was going to be difficult to implement. The NPP had a good policy, difficult implementation.

“In an interview on Face to Face on Citi TV, he said what the NPP is implementing currently is not a reflection of what they said in their campaign promise in 2016.


“Most parents thought they will implement it all at once in the first year. But they could not do all of them. They did one year at a time. So that was not a reflection of what they said. They even had to roll out the double-track system. Just to implement the policy.

“There is nothing wrong with that. But they could have been a little bit frank with us that this is how they will roll it out,” he added.

He reiterated that Free SHS was started by the Mahama-led administration.

“It is always a good idea to make education as good as possible and progressively. As a Deputy Education minister then, I saw the implementation of the FCUBE programme which was available to all children. Mahama started a free education programme. The only thing is that it was not branded as such during his time,” Mr Spio-Garbrah further indicated.