By William Yaw Owusu
Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Friday, November 13, 2015
The Ministry of Education (MoE),
in an attempt to disclaim DAILY GUIDE’s publication on the
procurement of dictionaries, has left more questions than answers.
The paper specifically mentioned in
the Monday, November 9, 2015 issue that the government appeared to contradict
itself on how it was going to raise the funds to pay the company that will
eventually win the bid to supply the dictionaries to basic schools worth $40
million.
In a rejoinder signed by Dan Osman Mwin, Head of Public Relations, the
ministry rather focused on the importance of dictionaries to basic education in
the country.
DAILY GUIDE never said that the dictionaries were not
vital to education.
Bizarre Position
The rejoinder further
mentioned how enrolment had increased dramatically at the basic level and the
fact that the dictionaries were going to improve the English language skills of
the pupils.
It also touched
on how it took government about a decade to procure more dictionaries.
“The last time
the Ministry procured dictionaries was in 2005/ 2006 about 11 years ago. The
enrolment in 2005/06, according to our records, was 3,596,854 whilst enrolment
in 2014/15 is 5,785,074, an increase of 2,188,220 pupils, thereby creating a
gap which the Ministry seeks to address by procuring 2,157,522 dictionaries for
the upper primary schools and 1,583,915 dictionaries for Junior High Schools
for distribution to pupils in public schools across the country,” it said.
Contradictions
Interestingly, DAILY
GUIDE said specifically that the open
tender document prepared last September with ITF No.: MOE/DIC/ICT/01/2015
indicated on one breadth that the government, acting through the sector
ministry, intended to apply part of its “budgetary allocations to cover
eligible payments under contracts for the supply and distribution of English dictionaries
to public basic schools in Ghana.”
However, the publication indicated
the ministry said Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) would provide the funds.
DAILY GUIDE’s checks at GETFund indicated that there was no request for
funding the procurement of dictionaries in such a huge project.
Strangely, the
ministry did not mention the role of GETFund in the rejoinder which had featured
strongly in the initial publication but chose to concentrate on enrolment and
other extraneous issues including supply of textbooks and the development of
human capital which the paper never talked about.
DAILY GUIDE wanted to find out how a contract could be put
on tender when the budgetary allocation, part of which would be used to fund
the supply of dictionaries, had not even been prepared.
Also, paper expressed
concern about the payment arrangement such that
the first tranche was expected to be released in 2017 even when budget for even
2016 had not yet been released.
Atlas Saga
On the issue of
the Atlas, the ministry was not able to disclose if it had settled the $44
million contract with the five publishers. The Ministry, in a way, asked the
paper to investigate its own allegations.
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