Money does not grow on trees therefore there can be is NO free lunch on this Earth that is already filled with greed. It is therefore quite shocking as citizens how we all fell for the political promise of Free SHS and it goes to tell how gullible we are as a people.
We have been indoctrinated as a people to believe that Education is everything and therefore we will do anything possible to take care of our kids education and it takes just a few percentage to neglect that responsibility mostly due to extreme poverty but with even that an extended family member can sometimes assume that responsibility if that child is brilliant. Sometimes rich individuals, MPs and other scholarship programs like the Cocoa scholarship can be activated and even before the introduction of free SHS there was syto which is still Free and can be accessed by all.
With this background we can all conclude that most Parents and Families treat education as a priority.
Now with the few Free sectors, one thing that was lacking was the Teachers remuneration which saw most of them going on strike and demonstrations due to the failure of government to meet payment schedules.
Lack of facilities like school buildings were issues we needed to deal with since we still have kids going to schools under trees.
Even Chalks was a problem and this is not to remind the family of any pain
Yes paying school fees is very painful and till date you keep hearing MPs and other big men complaining of how they struggle to pay fees for some brilliant kids in their constituencies and even individual Parents with plenty children also genuinely complain due to the high cost of school fees but the truth is the Pride of Most Parents is being able to pay those painful fees every Term and it makes them feel completely responsible. Some even send their Kids overseas to complete education at very high cost and it is their choice.
Now when Nana Addo made that promise of Free SHS we should have taken just a minute to think about it but because of how the human brain works when it hears free we all failed to think right.
Even in an interview on HardTalk on BBC the host of the program even thought that promise was an extravagant promise for a middle income country like ours since he could not fantom how we were going to be able to fund for it since not even some of the richest countries in the world will attempt such luxury.
Fact is President Nana Adda could not tell how much it was going to cost neither could he tell how he was going to fund it and yet we refused to realize as citizens even though he was very passionate about it, the reality was that it was unrealistic.
Today being Friday I won’t bother you with plenty writing that will leave us with plenty thinking but we might still have to ask ourselves one question and answer it after a few more paragraphs.
Fortunately for Nana Addo he won the elections and he is now faced with the reality of fulfilling that Free SHS promise.
The situation on the ground now is that there is 3 batches of students that he needs to take care of ie SHS 1, SHS 2 and SHS 3. After being hit with the Reality he realized he could not start
With all the 3 at once so he gave an excuse and started with the new batch i.e. SHS 1 and left the 2 and 3.
Now with just only one batch that he is taking care of trust me he is really struggling to provide funds for the tuitions and the fees and the schools are now using the payments from the 2nd and 3rd years to support the free 1st years. Ask any sincere teacher or headmaster and he will tell you the reality on the ground in fact in one of the last PTA meetings an appeal was made to the parents to support a little Else their kids will starve of food.
The painful truth is that next year will see a new batch being added making it 2 batches and I am envisaging the chaos that awaits us.
I believe most of the financial projections the government made failed them drastically and they are now looking for other ways and means which will be very difficult and if care is not taken we would use all our resources to pay school fees and when the kids graduate they will have no jobs since no money will be left to build the factories and develop the country and even our roads under construction might never see completion.
The President has nowhere to get that money from since nobody will even give you a loan to go pay school fees so he will simply resort to extreme taxes just to pay our children’s school fees.
Let’s all come to the realization that it is extremely difficult and unnecessary and then tell the President that YES you made that promise and we have seen the effort you are putting into it to make that dream a reality But please STOP and review it so that we can all save ourselves including him Mr president from dying of high blood pressure before our time.
In moving forward we can have a ceiling since we can’t carter for blockheads in school and also improve on other scholarship schemes in other to support parents who can’t afford and leave those who can afford to do so before our kids starts calling us irresponsible just because government wants to take political funs.
Like I said earlier the ball is in our court to save ourselves and our president from imposing futher painful taxes.
We have enough resources as in gold, oil etc to develop this beautiful country and we can’t let’s politics destroy it.
The question now is “is it worth it to rob Peter just to pay Paul?
Thank God It’s Friday and let’s enjoy it with less TAX pain.
#VhimMoveMent
