Is the government being candid with the private schools?

Of all the organizations that have faced challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, none have reached the level of frustration that the private schools have reached.

Due to the pandemic, there has been no school since March this year. And because there is no school there is no collection of school fees. And private schools which depend mainly on school fees have had to do without income since then.

READ: Pay Teachers Legacy Arrears Now! – Coalition of aggrieved teachers fume

Some schools are actually folding up, their teachers are living in squalid conditions and some proprietors have lost their lives untimely.

To mitigate the situation, the government has decided to throw in some promises of stimulus package here and there. But looking at the situation, it is obvious the government is on a mission to deceive the private schools.

To buy more time, the National Board for Small Scale Industries, NBSSI, gave an obvious impractical scenario of paying the package directly to the private school teachers. This was, of course, objected by the school managements.

Then recently NBSSI indicated that government has approved some Ghc50 million for the private schools.

But as Germans often say the devil is in the details. NBSSI indicated that the amount was for some 2,000 schools and that each school would receive Gh¢250,000.00.

Besides the fact that no criteria was given as to how the 2,000 schools were going to be selected out of the over 27,000 private schools, if you do the arithmetic you will realize that 50,000,000 by 2,000 is only 25,000 and nowhere near the 250,000.

This cannot be an oversight on the part of the NBSSI. It is a deliberate deception.

The truth is there is no money anywhere earmarked for the private schools and that this whole promising punctuation is a PR gimmick by the government to manage the frustration among private school proprietors and their teachers.

Osei Tutu