A member of ruling New Patriotic Party's communication team, P.K Sarpong has chided former Vice President Paa Kwesi Armissah-Arthur for criticising NPP's flagship Free SHS policy.
According to Mr. Sarpong "the former Vice President of Ghana stance conflicts with the one he and his boss used to exude prior to the 2016 elections".
"The only solution to the myriad of challenges that our educational sector was facing was just access, according to them, and that anything in the region of free education should be dispensed with.
Such a bold policy, as far as they were concerned, could and should be embraced in 2032, and therefore, any attempt to do otherwise would prove to be counterproductive.
In the light of this, huge sums of monies were injected into advertisements all tailored to dismiss the relevance of a free senior high school programme.
Countless numbers of adverts were made in their relentless efforts to tell Ghanaians that the Akufo-Addo proposed free senior high school policy would be unwholesome and should be discounted", he emphasized.
According to him, "Having given the proposal a great deal of thought, Ghanaians were able to decipher the senseless arguments the then governing NDC members were making and the futuristic yet sane proposition from the then opposition New Patriotic Party and came to the conclusion that the policy ought to be given room to operate, and thus voted massively for the New Patriotic Party".
He added that, "One would expect that a modicum of common sense would prompt these people to eat the humble pie and apologize to the populace over their insensitivity towards their vehement opposition to the free senior high school concept, what was fed to us, consistently, was the National Democratic Congress stoically sticking to their unholy sermons against the Free Senior High School programme".
"They have been furiously highlighting the teething issues the policy is being confronted with, making sure that they drum home the mantra that the policy should not have been given the green light this time around.
It could be recalled that quite recently, the former President of the Republic, John Dramani Mahama, at their skewed unity walk event, highlighted the ills of the programme, and said a future NDC government would discontinue the programme. He was soundly lambasted for his anti-free education sentiments and had to quickly retrace his steps.
Okudzeto Ablakwa, Solomon Nkansah, Kofi Adams and many of their party gurus have not hidden their intents of scrapping the free education policy if they come back to power in future.
In effect, the National Democratic Congress as an entity believes the Free Senior High School policy is not ideal and should be relegated to the background of insignificance.
It is therefore extremely difficult reconciling the position Amissah-Arthur is espousing with what the large majority of the members of the NDC believe should be the case.
Are we to believe that Amissah-Arthur is setting himself apart from the position the NDC holds in high esteem or this is his method of showcasing to the world that should he be given the opportunity to lead the NDC he would depart from what is considered to be the norm in the party?
Much as his suggestion may not be that oafish, it is important to also reiterate the fact that the NDC doesn't have anything worth considering to contribute to the discussions around the Free Senior High School policy.
The guaranteed truth is that none of these NDC members has anything sound to add to the discussion since the only avenue to deal with the challenges confronting the policy is to scrap it.
Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur should know that comedy doesn't sell any longer, and should, therefore, get serious if he is nursing an ambition to lead the NDC in the next elections".
Source: ghanaweb
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Yes, there are challenges. The Free SHS programme has challenges and gov't should embrace it. But Paa Kwesi gets me worried any time he speaks. He was as though Ghana never had a vice president who was paid. I think he is the same as Akua Donkor. They are state-funded political jokers, more or less.
What program has any NDC Government implemented which majority of Ghanaians ever benefited from apart from create, loot and share?
You have hit the nail right hard on point. The free form one SHS students are really suffering but coward head teachers are refusing to speak for victimization. Poor quality exercise books given to them, not enough textbooks for the students, no sleeping places for them. l heard in one school they have 2 separate dinning halls. one for fee-paying continuing students where good meals are served and the other for free form one SHS students where they depend on school-feeding-maggot-infested meals. NPP opened their mouth-wide promising everything for the sake of winning power. The reality is now starring at them. When campaigning they told ghanaians there is money here why are they appealing for benevolent people to support the SHS. where is HE Bawumia with all his antics. Ghanaians are watching, 2020 is not far from here. Bye bye to one year, 3 years is just here. God bless our homeland Ghana.
dont mind Amissah-Authur. he just woke up from a deep sleep since August 2012. and as lazy as they all are he wont read. ndc ple reading are the best of enemies
Why wouldn't PK quit politics as he never convinces anybody with his rhetoric? Oh PK just go rest. You only seem to make comedy on the political scene. Anyway, where have you been since the onaapo defeat?
Eiii P: K, so you dey, the 77 unanswered questions are still waiting for you oo
This Sarpong guy do not know what he's talking about. Where did the Amissah Arthur or JDM ever mentioned that the free SHS is not achievable? You see, these are some of the lies that you peddled out for people to believe your insensitive lies. NDC's stance on the free SHS was that there was lack of infrastructure to contain the numerous youth eager to continue their education to at the secondary level,therefore they started expanding exiting school facilities and putting up new school buildings, So as to enable any Basic education graduant to have access to secondary education. But you guys went your way to spew wic k ed lies to Ghanaians that, there's money in the system to cater for all SHS students in Ghana,that's from form 1 to form 3. But what did we see? We guys just rushed for only God knows how you people think about Ghanaians and haphazardly introduced the free SHS for only new entrants., without thinking aloud of the consequence of lack or inadequate infrastructure, teaching and learning materials. Only for students to be greeted with hardships that had resulted in contracting diseases and deaths due to congestion and over clouding. Please do not make mockery of yourself and your party rather, for this is not the best of arrangement for your so called Free SHS. I choose to call it FREE FORM ONE SECONDARY EDUCATION. I'm telling you,if you are not aware, majority of Ghanaian parents are not happy about how the NPP government went about the whole implementation of your much touted free- form-one secondary Education.It is indeed a fact that NPP could have done better. This infantile publication of yours would not, and cannot erase that fact that, NPP could have done better. Therefore the former Veep has not erred to speak to that. If you're a communicator does not give you that edge to make noise to objective views that make sense. Learn to talk when its necessary to make a better point but not this hypocritical good face to please your masters .