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President John Dramani Mahama has lashed out at critics of his school under trees programme saying it is a work in progress.

According to him, political opponents are using the programme to score cheap popularity.

Speaking at the annual Tortsogbeza Festival of the chiefs and people of Sokpoe in the South Tongu District of the Volta Region, President Mahama said his administration has a strategy in place to eliminate all schools under trees by 2020.

“In 2010 when we did a survey of schools under trees or substandard schools there were 4,210 of them and we undertook the schools under trees programme and since then we’ve built more than 1,700 schools all over the country.”

President Mahama said government concedes that “there are still schools that are substandard and under trees and I never said anywhere that we’ve replaced all the schools under trees with modern schools.”

“So sometimes when you see political quantity surveyors going around and showing a school and under, I’ve never said we’ve taken out all the schools under trees, we are taking them out and it is our expectation that by 2020 no Ghanaian child should be studying under a tree.

I believe that all those political quantity surveyors if they had put in the same efforts we are putting in by now we would have eliminated all schools under trees.”

The president also explained that the strategy adopted by government will ensure that the infrastructure deficit in the educational sector is covered.

“So we have a strategy for doing it, we’ve committed the district assemblies 216 of them every year from now to 2020 to replace two schools under trees. Government is going to build another 1,000 schools to remove schools under trees,” he added.