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The National Youth Organizer of the New Patriotic Party, Henry Nana Boakye, has described the 2020 manifesto of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as a “scam”.
According to him, some of the policies set out in the manifesto are neither robust nor feasible.
Speaking at the Majority Caucus on JoyNews, he highlighted that the promises made in the 2020 NDC manifesto especially in the area of education were “a bundle of lies”, and that is why Ghanaians should not give their vote to the NDC in the next elections.
He was emphatic about the uncertainty surrounding the NDC’s promise to phase out the two-track system.
According to him, the NDC does not have a substantial plan to do so, nor does it have a clear appreciation of the current situation.
He said, “Now when you ask them when are you going to do the phase [it out] Or when are you going to rule out the double track? “Oh, we don’t know, we’re going to delete it.” And I say, are you serious?
“Because the essence of [the] double track was to accommodate these students while we built these infrastructures so that [by] as long as we have more infrastructures then we will gradually remove them. That is the essence of it. So they don’t know anything, it surprises me ”.
He was even more concerned about the NDC’s plan to extend the Free Senior High School (SHS) policy to private senior high schools in underdeveloped and disadvantaged areas of the country.
According to him, there are no second cycle institutions in disadvantaged areas; All second cycle private institutions are located in urban areas and are expensive.
He said: “And what is even more dangerous is that they were going to extend free SHS to private institutions in less developed and underdeveloped disadvantaged areas. I do not understand this. When you go to my town you don’t see any private institution there.
“In fact, most private institutions are business oriented. They are educating their children and, at the same time, making their own money. It is a business for them. Because you are paying huge school fees, most of them are located in urban centers. “
The show’s host, Vincent Ekow Assafuah, who is also the Public Relations Officer for the Ministry of Education, said it was apparent that the NDC had not thought about its policy before including it in its 2020 manifesto.
He wonders how they plan to absorb fees from students enrolled in private international schools.
“Even with that, if I own a high school it is supposed to be a private institution. Now I decide that I charge GHS 3000 to students who come to that particular school. Now the government also decides that ‘I want to pay a flat fee of 1500 GHS for every student across the country,’ Vincent said.
He argued that “if GHS pays that particular child 1,500 at that international school, what it means is that their education is not free because the person is going to pay the remaining bill.”
That, for Assafuah, is “what they couldn’t do as far as thinking is concerned.”
It concluded that extending the Free SHS policy to second cycle private institutions in underdeveloped and disadvantaged areas would create inequality in the system instead of bridging the existing gap.
