Educational pressure group, the Graduate Patriotic Front (GRAPAF) has accused the Mahama led government of stifling Ghana’s educational sector of much needed resources.
According to the group since the current administration took over power it has deliberately suffocated all levels of education including post graduate education with delays in grants that are necessary to enhance academic work.
At a press conference in Accra on Wednesday, July 15, 2015, GRAPAF said, the delay was negatively affecting academic excellence.
The Communication Director of GRAPAF, Raymond Ayilu, expressed surprise that government decided to fix very low grants for payments to graduate students in the country.
According to him whilst graduate students pursuing Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Master of Arts (MA) received a paltry GH 450,their Master of Philosophy colleagues and PHD students received measly amounts of 470 and 700 respectively which were woefully inadequate to support their research work and was negatively affecting academic excellence.
Mr. Ayilu said GRAPAF has come to the strongest conviction that the claim by President John Dramani Mahama about his determination to ensure quality education in the country was a mere political rhetoric to deceive the young people of Ghana.
The group implored the President “to as a matter of urgency instruct the Minister of Finance and the scholarship secretariat to pay graduate students their bursaries and research grants since most students are finding it difficult to complete their academic research as a result of lack of funding”
It also called the various stakeholders in the post- graduate education delivery to add their voices to the call on the government to immediately release the funds allocated for the purposes of paying bursary and research grant.
Government of Ghana has over the years invested in post-graduate education through the disbursement of the annual bursary and thesis grants meant to support research and innovation among graduate students in public universities.
The bursary and grant are among five types of scholarships for public universities and polytechnics under the local tertiary scholarship awards of the scholarship secretariat.
The payments are made to PhD,M.Phil, and Masters/Postgraduate Diploma students working on their research for one academic year while the bursary grant are paid uniformly across board annually to mitigate the course cost of postgraduate education.
GRAPAF further bemoaned the delay in disbursement of funds to the universities and professional tertiary institutions in such as nursing and community training colleges as well as teacher training colleges urging government to expedite action on resourcing students and the institution for smooth academic work to continue.
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