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Press Release
AFAG, May 30, 2012
GOVERNMENT SPONSORED EDUCATION TO CUBA?
Ladies & gentlemen of the press, good morning and welcome to
another important national issue of accountable governance
being raised by AFAG today. AFAG wishes to precede our
statement today with Article 35 clause 6a of our 1992
constitution under the Directive Principle of State Policy
With a heavy heart today, and recognizing how dangerously
divisive the subject of our press conference is, AFAG is
worried about the most blatant discrimination by the sitting
vice-president.
Ladies & gentlemen, last week, the country witnessed the
sending off dinner of 250 Ghanaian students (hosted by the
vice president John Mahama) to Cuba for six years of medical
training at the cost Gh ₵ 50,000 per year. By simple
arithmetic, this puts the total cost for the entire program at
an astronomical GHC 160 million. It should however be stated
that with superior infrastructure and training than what
currently pertains in Cuba, the cost of training a medical
doctor for the entire period of study is GHC20,000. This means
the total cost of training the 250 students here in Ghana
would be GHC5.0million. This, ladies and gentlemen, translates
into huge savings of Gh₵ 155 million.
The amount saved, AFAG strongly believes, could be channeled
in resourcing both the Volta and Brong Ahafo Universities
which have only been given a seed money of GH₵ 5million, pay
polytechnic teachers, who are on strike, or use to expand the
medical school facilities in four public universities
currently offering medical training for future doctors. To
this end AFAG is vehemently opposed to this deal as it only
further exposes the Mills-Mahama government to have its
priorities wrong and completely out of touch with what is in
the national interest.
Background of the current Deal
Ladies and gentlemen, the point should be made, that training
of persons in Cuba is not new to us as a country. However,
when the program began under PNDC Chairman Jerry John
Rawlings, in 1983, it had no cost implication to the Ghanaian
taxpayer and Ghana had not developed the kind of training
infrastructure currently available.
AFAG will therefore want you (the media) to join us in asking
the questions, what has changed for today, a government that
claims to be the offspring of the PNDC, to be today throwing
scarce cash to a programme that can be done at least four
times cheaper here in Ghana? But, this has been the stock in
trade of the Mills-Mahama led NDC. They are quick, at the drop
of the umbrella, to ignore what is Ghanaian in favor of what
is foreign, whether it is Korea, South Africa, China or Cuba.
In this case, what has changed is that, His Excellency John
Dramani Mahama, under a Revised Cuban Agreement during his
April 2011 trip to Cuba brokered this obnoxious deal on behalf
of Ghana contrary to what is reported on the official website
of the Cuban embassy in Ghana. And we quote some portions of
the bilateral relations relative to the scholarship agreement.
It states;
‘under the agreements, the Cuban government will provide
scholarship for all the 250 students who were selected from
deprived communities throughout the country and would be ready
to come back to serve their communities…’
Scholarship Distribution
Ladies and Gentlemen, the cost implication of the Revised
Cuban Agreement is worrying and dangerous to the unity and
harmony of this multi-ethnic state and more worrying is the
level of discrimination that has been deliberately applied in
the selection of students for this scholarship programme to
Cuba.
Our random checks of the names show that, not a single one of
those selected was considered on political party basis. The
names were forensically screened to avoid anyone connected to
the Opposition.
But, that is not all. Our greatest concern is to with the
regional distributions upon which the applicants were selected
across the country. According to official documents available
to AFAG, of the 250 Ghanaians selected, a total of number of
122 was allocated to the 10 regions, whiles another 179 was
distributed amongst the office of the president, vice
president, national security and the scholarship secretariat.
The regional distribution is as shown in the table below;
Region Scholarship Awards
Ashanti 6
Eastern 7
Central 12
Volta 10
Gt. Accra 17
Brong Ahafo 9
Northern 10
Western 18
Upper West 12
Upper East 21
Again, of the remaining 138 beneficiaries on the protocol list
of the vice president/scholarship secretariat/min of health,
only 27(19.5%) persons were Akans and other southern tribes.
Akans make up about half of the national population.
Ladies and gentlemen, the vice president on behalf of the
Mills-Mahama administration has several questions to answer.
Questions:
1. What criteria were used in selecting the beneficiaries?
2. AFAG wishes to know the membership of the selection panel?
3. Is the scholarship secretariat, under President Mills and
Vice President Mahama, pursuing an ulterior agenda as
witnessed in Dundee University in the selection of applicants
for Oil & Gas courses?
4.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we expect the Vice President to respond
to these questions as you take note of unprecedented bias in
the award of scholarship to Ghanaian youth to study in Cuba
and beyond. We do not want the wrong signals to be sent.
We are extremely worried Thanks.
Signed:
Abu Ramadan 0244570006
Arnold Boateng 0244294754
Zalia Seidu 0262481240
Henry Haruna Asante 0248274646
Bright Acheampong 0545230621
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