Ghana’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Ireland, Sabah Zita Benson, has raised concerns over what she described as excessive expenditure on Ghanaian scholarship beneficiaries to the UK to study courses.
Speaking on TV3’s Ghana Tonight, Wednesday, August 12, Zita Benson disclosed that she has reviewed documents relating to three or four cases in which individuals awarded scholarships to study programmes such as Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Public Policy in the UK travelled with their spouses and children at the expense of the state.
She revealed that the Scholarship Secretariat under the previous Akufo-Addo administration funded premium visa fees, plane tickets and fees for yellow fever vaccination for each family member who accompanied these scholarship beneficiaries to the UK to pursue courses that could be studied in Ghana.
“It is not just somebody. I have about three files or maybe four of such people who were brought in, a whole family. It could be the husband or wife gets scholarship to come and study and they are studying things like MBA or Policy that we are teaching in our universities.
“So a man or woman gets award to come and study MBA or Policy with free tuition and stipend and then the awardee comes along with the whole family,” she stated.
She explained that in some cases, scholarship recipients travelled with as many as four or five children and a spouse, with the government bearing the travel and related expenses.
“Some of these families were as many as four children plus a spouse, five children plus a spouse, three children plus a spouse,” she said.
Ms Benson said her office had reviewed documents and payment records showing that the state paid travel agents to facilitate the journeys, including the purchase of air tickets and other travel-related services.
“I can tell you for a fact. My eyes have seen the documents and the payments, I know the travel agents that was collecting these payments to buy tickets for them. It is just that I don’t want to put their name out there.
“We paid for whole families to move in with their parents and their spouses to come and study Master’s Degree. It is insane,” she bemoaned.
According to her, the expenditure went beyond tuition and included premium visa fees, air tickets, yellow fever cards and vaccinations for accompanying family members.
She further claimed that the government paid £8,160 for each family member who accompanied a scholarship beneficiary to the UK.
Ms Benson questioned the justification for spending such amounts on courses that, in her view, could be pursued at Ghanaian universities.
“They were not using ordinary visa and I can tell you for a fact that the UK Embassy charges 500 pounds for premium visas.
“So, we were paying for premium visas for these awardees and their families, we were paying for air tickets for all of them, and then we were paying for yellow fever card, vaccination and then we were paying 8160 pounds each to every family member that accompanied the awardee for coming to study one course that can be studied in Ghana,” Zita Benson noted.
She called for the recovery of the funds from beneficiaries who allegedly failed to undertake the studies for which the scholarships were awarded.
“Government should make them refund. They didn’t come and study, they didn’t get any scholarship, so government should make them refund everything including visa fees,” she said.
The High Commissioner also called for investigations into the circumstances surrounding the expenditure, suggesting that persons found responsible should be prosecuted for causing financial loss to the state.
She linked the issue to Ghana’s debt to UK universities, saying the situation has compounded the country’s current debt of about £35 million that remained unpaid to UK universities.
