Free SHS may collapse next decade if government fails to target poor – Haruna

The former Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu has warned that the government’s free Senior High Schoolprogram will run into difficulties within the next decade if it is not targeted.

According to him, the policy must have an inbuilt testing mechanism to ensure the rich and affluent pay.

The Tamale South MP indicated that organizations like UNESCO have all advised on the matter which the government has ignored for political expediency.

“Mr. Speaker, we are doing what we ought to have done several years back, UNESCO was established somewhere 95 and Ghana has benefited enormously from them. Ghana needs to take advantage of UNESCO’s advice on secondary education. How accessible is it, what is the quality, are we running a secondary education that produces quantity and not quality?

“Ghana needs a test mechanism to determine who can pay and who cannot pay. This political thing of wanting to please everybody at the detriment of quality will hang in this country in the next decade if we don’t look back,” he stated.

Government has between 2017 and 2021 spent over 5 billion cedis on the free SHS policy.

Reacting to the assertion of Haruna Iddrisu, Majority Chief Whip Frank Annoh-Dompreh stated the program is work in progress and thus will in future accommodate the suggestions of means testing.

The Nsawam-Adoagyiri MP however argued the policy has brought relief to many families.