Promising to restore teacher trainee allowance is NPP propaganga - Mahama
President John Dramani Mahama has described a promise by the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) to restore teacher trainee allowances which his government has stopped as a mere propaganda.
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According to him, the NPP was only engaging in political talk. “Let’s take the politics away. I know that political contest is keen and so everybody wants to take advantage to be able to overcome their political opponents, otherwise this is purely, purely political talk,” he said.
Teacher trainees in Ghana for many years enjoyed allowances provided them by government as an incentive until recently when it was abolished.
Government explained that after upgrading the teacher training institutions to tertiary level, same as other teacher training universities in Cape Coast and Winneba, there was no sense of equity to continue to pay allowances.
Again, since enrolment had shot up about 63 percent with the removal of the quota system, there was also no need to continue to pay allowances, rather offer an opportunity for teacher trainees to access loans from the Students Loan Trust to finance their education same as all other tertiary students.
This has been criticized with some describing President Mahama as anti-teacher by scrapping the teacher trainee allowances.
The opposition NPP’s flagbearer, Nana Akufo-Addo and his running mate, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia have promised to restore the allowance when they win this year’s elections since according to them, there was no basis for abolishing it.
But responding to the issue at a press conference at the Flagstaff House on Tuesday, President Mahama questioned the purpose for which the opposition was promising to restore it.
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“… in our political discourse and competition for power, you say when you come back you’ll restore it. I mean for what purpose. The trainees have started accessing the students’ loan and from the records I have, more than 5000 of them have gone to access the loans and are financing their education with it.”
“I don’t think it’s necessary for us to continuously eject politics into policy making. Policy making must be consistent so that we are able to make it more predictable and more useful to our country.”
President Mahama explained that the genesis of the policy was that, teacher training institutions could not fill their spaces because they were under a quota system and could only take about 9000 students in all training institutions in the country.
Paying student allowances at the time was not problematic but when they were raised to tertiary level and brought to same level as Universities of Education Winneba and Cape Coast that also train teachers, where no allowances are paid but rely on students loan meant the allowances had to be withdrawn, the President said.
Again when the quota system was also removed, enrolment into teacher training institutions increased over 63 per cent.
“To therefore say that we are anti – teacher, if you look at a lot of the things that we have done, I think its political propaganda to say we are anti- teacher. I have a document here which I got from the Ministry of Education and it just shows the things we have done in respect of teachers. We have increased the feeding grants’” President Mahama said.
He said apart from all that has happened, government was still providing feeding grants to teacher training institutions and the students are fed three times daily.
Writer's email: enoch.frimpong@graphic.com.gh