The founder and president of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has criticised the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) over its promise to introduce a free academic fees policy for first-year students.
According to him, the free tuition promise is not consistent with its promise to review the Free Senior High School programme, which many, including IMANI Africa, support.
Franklin Cudjoe, who made these remarks in an interview on Joy FM, indicated that the NDC cannot be promising to review the Free SHS programme, which has become a huge burden on the government's finances, while making another educational promise that would also put pressure on the government’s budget.
He added that any policy that seeks to provide free education should be targeted towards the needy.
“There will always be needy people, right? I'm sure everybody would have been needy at one point. With education, I think there's still room for covering a lot more people who definitely need support. My only worry is that there seems to be an internal inconsistency when it comes to the provision of free or freebies for not just education, but for everything else that maybe the NDC would have had issues with.
“And indeed, it's good to have issues with a policy that seems to be universal when in actual fact it can be targeted. And on this, I'm referring to their position on the Free SHS. The overwhelming call for a review of the Free SHS policy was a good one. It's still a good one. It obviously is sinking some of our position. But not everybody is poor. Right? And so, you want to target.
He added, “How the NDC moved from that position of calling for a review of the Free SHS system based on fee payment or maybe even infrastructure and whatever to now say that, oh, first year, because there's some level of need and there's a sub-level of abstraction to access, would ensure that everybody goes in in terms of not paying tuition fees. There's a huge inconsistency there. I think they need to clarify that. I think that one needs to be clarified.”
The IMANI boss suggested that one of the major issues affecting students in the country is the cost of books, which politicians should consider looking into to help students get the required books for their studies.
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