Haurna Iddrisu
The Minority Leader, Haurna Iddrisu has asked the Auditor-General’s Department to audit the accounts of all public universities, especially fees and charges as authorized under Article 187 of the 1992 Constitution to determine how the public universities apply the funds.
He said the audited accounts would have to be forwarded to Parliament for scrutiny since the universities have taken certain unilateral decisions on fees.
The Minority leader, who was contributing to a debate during the second reading of the Technical Universities (Amendment) Bill, 2017 in Parliament yesterday, said that government has been paying for tuition in public universities and wondered why they charge exorbitant fees just like the private ones.
“Let the public universities be reminded that government pays for tuition in public universities and therefore those fees must not be offloaded to suffering parents to pay again,” he said.
He, therefore, called on the Minister of Education to take special interest in monitoring fees and charges charged by the public universities and for the Auditor-General to audit those fees and charges to verify what exactly the universities have been using them for.
He also called on various public universities to concentrate on the core courses for which they were established so that graduates who come out of those institutions would be fully trained ‘specialists.’
“The universities must also structure their curricula in a way to meet the developmental aspirations of the country.”
He, however, appealed to the government to ensure that the books and research allowances are paid regularly to lecturers in public universities to enable them give off their best.
The Minority leader opposed some clauses in the new bill which seek to restrict the tenure of directors of finance in the universities.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Akim Oda, William Agyapong Quaittoo, in his contribution to the debate, disagreed with the minority leader’s position on the term of office of directors of finance in the technical universities, arguing that the directors of finance in those institutions, with the knowledge that they could be in the position permanently, engage in all sorts of malfeasance.
He said, for instance, that there was concrete evidence that in some of the public universities, directors of finance had opened more than 20 different accounts and that in case the authorities forget about those accounts they could easily access the money for their personal use.
He said the new bill had been drafted to satisfy the agitating factions of the Committee of Education.
The Minister of Education, Matthew Opoku Prempeh, on his part, said that Cabinet has endorsed the Tertiary Education Policy that would ensure that universities focus on their core mandate.
The Amendment Bill seeks to amend Act 992 to give legal backing to the conversion of the Cape Coast Polytechnic and the Tamale Polytechnic into technical universities.
The bill also intends to strengthen the conversion process to ensure that staff with appropriate qualifications are engaged or retained to effectively execute the mandate of technical universities.
By Thomas Fosu Jnr