John Dramani Mahama, the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has declared that the ‘no academic fees’ program for first-year university students will be funded in part by cutting President Akufo-Addo’s extravagant budget during his next administration.
Mahama claims that the project would cost between GH₵270 and GH₵290 million, a substantial amount less than the GH₵2 billion presidential budget.
Mahama said as much on Tuesday during his speech to a crowd at Juapong.
“We have costed it (no academic fees initiative) and we approximate that for all first-year students in public tertiary institutions, it should cost anywhere between GH₵270 to about GH₵290 million. Let me tell you something, the president, a few years ago, his travel budget in nine months amounted to GH₵69 million. They held one cabinet retreat at the presidency, it cost almost GH₵5 million.
“There is so much waste in the system and even if you look at the office of the president budget alone you will be able to cut to raise enough money to pay these academic facility user fees for all level hundred students.”
“Do you know the budget for the office of the president? It is GH₵2 billion every year. It is even now that IMF has come and they have cut it down, at a point where it used to be three point something billion Cedis every year. We do not want, especially in the first year when the students are coming in for the first time to go through what we call fee stress, that is why we call it a ‘no fee stress policy’.
“So we are saying that we can absorb the academic user fee but it will not affect the subventions of governments to the universities and institutions of higher learning.”
“The subventions from the government have kept declining, we are going to increase the subventions but apart from that we will make sure that universities get their subventions on time so that they can balance their budget,” he stated.