The Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) has given final clarification on the number of Community Day Senior High School building projects, commonly called E-Blocks it has completed as of December 2016.
This follows what the Fund says is ‘political media debate’ on the projects particularly being fueled by the National Communications Officer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).
There has been misinformation as to which political administration has completed more of the 124 E-blocks.
According to the NDC, the government is in a “futile effort to distort” the record of the Mahama government by “deceptively reclassifying” some completed E-Block projects as uncompleted, thereby reducing the total number to 29.
The opposition party said the handing-over notes of the former Minister of Education under the Mahama government, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku Agyemang, bears out that the NDC completed and commissioned 46 out of the 124 Community Day Senior High Schools it initiated.
“This was widely reported by the media. The internet never forgets,” the NDC stated, rekindling the infrastructure-obsessed debate that gripped the nation during the 2020 general election due to an extraordinary move for political opportunism.
According to the NDC, each of the Community Day Senior High Schools had an ultra-modern library, furnished classrooms, ICT laboratory, Biology laboratory, Physics laboratory, Chemistry laboratory, General Science laboratory, a school bus for students and a pick-up vehicle for office staff among others.
“Interestingly, the first Minister of Education of the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government, Mathew Opoku Prempeh, is on public record to have said in 2017 that the NDC/Mahama government completed 46 Community Day Senior High Schools,” it stressed.
The party said a so-called reclassification by the government was largely done on the “contrived and flimsy grounds” that some of the 46 completed E-Blocks had no furniture, even though the physical structures had been fully completed.
“The attached document (stamped fake) being circulated by hired NPP apologists on social media is a product of this warped thinking and should be treated with utmost contempt,” the NDC said.
It listed the Community Day Senior High Schools (CDSHS) that were completed and/or commissioned by former President John Mahama before exiting office.
However, giving final clarification on the issue, GETFund mentioned that “by the end of the year 2016, 22 of the E-Blocks being funded by GETFund were completed”.
It further explained that, Government awarded 101 contracts on E-Blocks between 2014 and 2016 on the accounts of GETFund aside from 23 other projects from the World Bank, out of which seven were completed in the same period.
Stressing further it said by the end of 2020, 30 more E-blocks were completed 14 being GETFund funded with that of the remaining 16 being completed by the World Bank.
It stated that GETFund also terminated 27 E-blocks in 2018.
“Outstanding 38 E-blocks are at various stages of completion”, a statement from GETFund further added.
By Vincent Kubi