The Graduate Students Association of Ghana (GRASAG) has served notice of a planned picketing at the seat of government on September 21, 2016 if government fails to release the 2015/2016 bursary and research grants.
The association made this known at a press conference in Accra.
Addressing the media, the national president of GRASAG, Rashid Kwesi Etuaful, said the leadership has exhausted all avenues and has followed the laid down procedure to get the grants released but to no avail. He said if government failed to release the grants by the 16th of September, 2016, members will picket at the Flagstaff House.
He said: “We believe that the minister of finance should be able to mobilize and release the cheques to the scholarship secretariat by Friday September16, 2016. We are serving notice, should the Minister of Finance fail to meet the September 16deadline, all members and member institutions should join GRASAG to picket on September 21, 2016 at the Flagstaff House to demonstrate our displeasure over the undue delay of our thesis and bursary grants.”
The University of Ghana branch of the association organized a similar press conference in July to get government to pay the grants but was unsuccessful.
The bursary and thesis grants are among five types of scholarships for public universities under the Local Tertiary Scholarship Awards of the Scholarship Secretariat of the Republic of Ghana.
The thesis grants are payments made to PhD, MPhil and MA/Postgraduate Diploma students working on their research for one academic year.
The bursary grants on the other hand are paid uniformly across board to mitigate the cost of postgraduate education in Ghana.
Mr Etuaful appealed to President John Dramani Mahama to intervene and direct the Finance Minister to release the money.
He called on government to find a lasting solution to the problem and also consider increasing the amount in subsequent years.
The president of the University of Ghana branch of GRASAG, Nana Kwame Asarfo-Agyei said the association was fully prepared for the picketing and that the police have been duly notified in accordance with the Public Order Act.
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