Scholarship guarantors must be responsible for breach of agreement — PAC

The Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Dr James Klutse Avedzi, has said guarantors of scholarships for lecturers of tertiary institutions who fail to return home after their studies abroad must be held responsible for that breach of agreement with the state.

He made the remark at the just-ended PAC sitting in Ho.

Heads and other officials of the various municipal and district assemblies in the Volta, Oti, Eastern and Greater Accra regions, as well as heads of second cycle and tertiary institutions turned up for the five-day sitting, which ended last week Friday (September 20).

Dr Avedzi, who is the Member of Parliament for Ketu North, said the trend must be stopped without compromise because it was creating huge debts for the government.

He said it was mind-boggling how people in academia, who were rather expected to demonstrate morally upright values, refused to acknowledge the support they enjoyed from the government in their professional development goals and chose to violate the conditions for the scholarships with impunity.

Dr Avedzi observed that most of the defaulting lecturers were from the technical universities, with funding from the Group of Technology (GTech).

He urged GTech to ensure beneficiaries of government scholarships adhered to the terms of the study grants.

“All monies owned the government under the terms of scholarships must be retrieved in times of infractions,” Dr Avedzi insisted.

He explained that academic fraudulence on the part of lecturers who were awarded scholarships would only be halted when drastic actions were taken against the guarantors of the scholarships.

Dr Avedzi said the sordid state of affairs in academia was the result of the lack of commitment on the part of the guarantors, who were often colleagues of the beneficiaries of the scholarships.

The PAC chairman urged technical universities to put firm measures in place to compel the guarantors to refund the losses incurred if the beneficiaries of the scholarships refused to return home to work.  

Meanwhile, the committee realised during the sitting that, some lecturers, who resigned from one university and gained employment at another, received salaries from both universities, a trend the committee described as criminal.

The committee warned that those identified for the misconduct would be prosecuted swiftly.

It also warned management staff at the various tertiary institutions to vacate their duty posts on retirement and refrain from taking further salaries for no work done after retirement.