Founder and leader of Ghana Union Movement (GUM), Christian Kwabena Andrews, aka ‘Kyiri Abosom‘, is making a proposal to be factored into the Free Senior High School (SHS) programme as part of its review.
He has suggested that students planning to pursue practical courses should benefit from the Free SHS policy, while those focused on theoretical courses be made to pay their fees.
According to him, those pursuing theoretical courses in the senior high schools have not really made any contributions for the country, questioning why the nation should spend on training more lawyers whilst it has no industries.
“I think it’s better we give free to those people who are going to do the practical work but those who want to learn the theory to become a lawyer, you have to pay,” he said.
When asked why he proposed this disparity, Mr Andrews explained, “I think it’s your own business, we’re not going to benefit anything out of that. How can we train more lawyers in this country while we don’t even have a company?
“Look at these people in Parliament and the way they are behaving, everybody wants to be a lawyer; they just want to suck our blood but not go into the practical field where they put up a factory,” he said in an interview on Accra-based JoyNews Wednesday, August 14, 2024.
He also criticised John Mahama’s free-fees policy for first-year tertiary students saying what the children need is skills training and not free-fees, citing John Mahama’s criticism of the skills of SHS graduates as deficient, contributing to their inability to create jobs for themselves after school.
His comments follow a promise by John Dramani Mahama during the launch of the NDC’s Youth Manifesto, revealing his intentions to scrap the fees for all first-year tertiary institutions.
“As Mahama himself said the graduates who don’t have work to do – because they don’t have the skills we need in our country. That’s what he said when he was in power.
“So, I’m even surprised to hear him come and say that he’s going to give entrance to the university free for the first-year students,” told
Questioning the impact of the policy, Kyiri Abosom noted that students who pay their own fees even struggle to find jobs after school, asking what would become of those whose fees would be taken care of by the State.
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