Free Level 100? Remember ‘nurses allowances’ - Enimil Ashon writes

Politics has not changed its character down the centuries.

Apparently, the pre-election promises galore which we in Ghana are lately becoming familiar with have been the signature-mark of politicians since 508 B.C. when the ancient Greeks implemented the earliest form of democracy.

Ever since elections in Ghana meant a ticket to celebrity status and a passport to (oft-ill-gotten) wealth, politicians have been outdoing each other in promises.

It has made cynics of all. It was Nikita Khrushchev, first Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1953) who said that politicians “promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers”.

So, as it is becoming obvious to us, we aren’t seeing anything new in Ghana. Terrible, if you ask me, though I must concede that in one way or the other, Ghana, through competitive politics, has gradually been achieving some level of physical progress over time.

Indeed, but for corruption (10 per cent kick-backs), Ghana should have attained the heights reached by Dubai or Singapore! 

Education

In defence of politics, I’d say that in Ghana, if for nothing at all, the education sector has been profiting from the largesse of politics. 

In 2005, J. A. Kufuor (in my opinion, the best President Ghana has had since Kwame Nkrumah and General I.K. Acheampong) gave us the Capitation Grant. 
He went further.

With the help of the Dutch Government, Kufuor started the School Feeding Programme. At a point in time, some 3.8 million pupils in 10,000 public basic schools were being fed one hot meal a day.

Then came the juiciest vote-catcher of all time: Akufo Addo’s Free SHS. Over a period of seven years, his government spent GH¢8.4billion to put 5.7 million Ghanaians through high school education.

The Free SHS having proved to be a vote-catcher, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. Not only is it not ending any time soon; it is promising to get even juicier and gravier. 

Tuition-free

This year, Candidate Mahama has topped it. He will, in addition to Free SHS in public schools, spread the benefits to private schools.

Not only that; he will also make Level 100 tuition-free for tertiary students! My heart missed a beat.

Where is the money going to come from? Given that KNUST alone was admitting an average of 23,000 new students a year – before its decision to cut down on admission of first-year students for the 2023 academic year by about 8,000 – we can begin to imagine the sheer cost impossibility, if that number (even if it comes to around 10,000 Level 100 students) is spread over 15 national public universities and 10 Technical Universities.

In Ghana, it is raining promises. And so just the right time to caution care. I am like the man once bitten by a snake: worms frighten me. I give this caution on the back of the totally needless headaches we have suffered because of the political promise of restoring “Nursing and Teacher Training Allowances”.

For the fifth time since its promise and implementation, I insist that it lacks good judgement in economic planning.

Why should a Third World country, as cash-starved as Ghana, pay anybody an allowance to train as a teacher or nurse when they themselves are paying bribes to be admitted?

I am not sure Dr Mahamadu Bawumia himself will recommend this to any nation in the 21st century. 

Last May 14, Bawumia, on a campaign trail, announced that GH¢177 million had been released to pay 13 months arrears of allowances owed to nursing trainees across the country.

Hear him: “This Thursday, the Controller is transferring GH¢177 million to the Ministry of Health to pay the nursing training allowances. It will drop,” he vowed, to cheers by the nurses.

Three weeks after the promise, the Ghana Nurses and Midwives Trainees Association (GNMTA) went to the media to register its disappointment that “Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s pledge has not materialised.”

Mind you, many of the nurses in the crowd had not been employed since completing their training, three years ago.

Strict proof

That is why we must subject Mahama’s promise to strict proof of ability to pay. Pressed to disclose how he intends to fund his Level 100 promise, he promised to reduce “wasteful government expenditures”.

Hear him: "The office of the President's budget alone can be cut to raise enough money for all Level 100 students. The budget for the Presidency is two billion Ghana cedis every year, and you say we cannot find 270 million Ghana cedis to ease the fee stress of our students who are coming to their first year in university?"

Well, it’s raining promises. Some may be fulfilled. As a people, however, let us remember what former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told the people of England: “Everything a politician promises at election time has to be paid for either by higher taxation or by borrowing.”

Her warning seems to make more sense to Ghanaians than anyone else.