By William
Yaw Owusu
Monday February
26, 2018
Former President John Dramani Mahama’s attempt to once
again run down the Free Senior High School (SHS) policy being implemented by the
New Patriotic Party (NPP) government has been exposed.
He said at Somanya in the Eastern Region last
Saturday that the Akufo-Addo-led government is struggling to meet its statutory
payment obligations and other financial commitments and claimed that it was due
to the implementation of the Free SHS policy which commenced in September last
year.
Fiscal
Space
Mr Mahama specifically told National Democratic
Congress (NDC) supporters after the party’s ‘unity walk,’ The problem this
government is facing, and it is in their own interest, is that Free Senior High
School is absorbing all the fiscal space they have and so almost every money
you have, you are having to put it into Free Senior High School.
“So you can’t pay District Assemblies Common Fund,
you can’t pay NHIS (National Health Insurance Scheme), you can’t pay GETFund
(Ghana Education Trust Fund), you can’t pay other salaries and things because
all your money is going into Free Senior High School.”
GIFMIS
Records
However, a status report generated by the Ghana
Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) as at Tuesday, 20th
February on Statutory Funds appears to rubbish the former president’s claims
that the government is struggling to meet its financial obligations on payment
to statutory institutions.
The end of year (2017) payments structure showed
that the three critical areas namely, DACF, NHIL and GETFund as mentioned by
the former president, do not appear to have statutory arrears as payments are
made on time ever since the NPP government took over from him and his NDC
administration.
A source said that regarding the DACF, the total
amount of GH¢1,001,331,630.18 required by the assemblies was paid in 2017,
while the GH¢1,115,375,298.57 for the NHIS was also honoured in the same year.
The NPP government’s obligation to GETFund, which
was GH¢557,683,442.28, was also honoured in 2017.
Payment
Processing
“Since January, 2018 we have paid almost all the
outstanding for the last year. It takes about six to 10 weeks to reconcile all
the revenues, which come in to enable us establish the amounts to be released;
that is why there is about an eight-week lag, but we are on course,” the source
said, adding, “So it a falsehood that we are not making any payments.”
According to the source, Mr Mahama appears still
bitter about the implementation of the Free SHS by his political opponent -
President Akufo-Addo - and stated, “Almost all statutory institutions were
starved of funds during his tenure,” (referring to Mahama’s administration).
He also said that the NPP government has “paid
arrears of over GH¢600 million mainly to contractors as at February 2018.”
Free
SHS Concerns
Mr Mahama is once again, displaying his abhorrence
for the free SHS policy, which many experts have said is serving as a catalyst
for development.
He told the NDC supporters that the policy is being
implemented in “ad hoc manner,” and claimed the Akufo-Addo NPP government did
not have any guidelines for the implementation of the policy.
“For a programme that is so fundamental, you have no
guidelines (and) you are just implementing it in an ad hoc manner...when we say
this you say we are naysayers..,” he told the crowd.
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