The University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) has welcomed a directive to authorities at the country’s tertiary institutions to ban the sale of handouts to students by lecturers.

The Education Minister, Prof. Jane Naana Opoku Agyeman at the weekend directed lecturers of tertiary institutions to cease the sale of their handouts to students, arguing it does not help the students to research.

The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology has since 2014 banned its lecturers from selling handouts to their students, it said discourage students from taking interest in personal research.

Commenting on the latest directive by the Education Minister, President of UTAG, Prof Kwame Osei Kwarteng said the practice “brings hardship to the parents and the students so the University Councils must take up the issue”.

Speaking on Onua FM’s Yen Sempa Monday, he said “I am against the sale of handout to the students. Teachers are facilitators so they should not sell to students”. He explained that “it is ethically no right because student who fail to buy these handouts end up failing the papers of these lecturers”.

Prof Kwarteng added: “if lecturers want the students to be independent minded, they should tell the children to do their own research and not to produce what has been written by other authors even though they don’t pay copyright to the original owners”.