President John Dramani Mahama has promised to widen existing social interventions to cover students in private tertiary institutions.

According to him, government cannot provide the best education to the citizenry without the support of the private sector.

The President made the promise when he addressed students of the All Nations University in Koforidua in the Eastern region.

“Let me say that the private universities which were an idea generated under the NDC government because we realized that the state alone could not finance and provide adequate opportunity at the tertiary level for our young people,” he revealed.

He bemoaned the government’s inability to include private tertiary institutions in some government interventions programmes currently being enjoyed by their colleagues in public tertiary schools but added that stronger collaboration between the government and the private sector could greatly change the situation.

“We think that government needs to partner with the private universities to be able to give our young people the best education possible. It doesn’t matter whether a young person is in a public university of a private university,” he said.

He said every student has to be treated equally and promised that under his presidency, the government “will distribute 400,000 laptops, and I have directed that students in private universities should be properly included.”