Mahama's free shs announcement 'shambolic',Franklin cudjoe of imani ghana

Mahama’s free SHS announcement ‘shambolic’ – Franklin Cudjoe

Franklin Cudjoe of IMANI Ghana

Franklin Cudjoe of IMANI Ghana says President John Mahama’s announcement of a free Senior High School (SHS) policy is “whimsical.”
“The whimsical nature with which this policy was announced…this was whimsical, it was capricious, it was not thought through, it was just mentioned,” he said.
He also opined that the President’s state of the nation address last Tuesday “was all over the place, lacked coherence.”
The President, John Mahama as mandated by the constitution delivered the state of the nation address to Parliament last Tuesday, during which he announced that his government will from 2015, start the implementation of the free SHS policy.
Sharing his thoughts on the matter on Citi FM’s, The Big Issue, Franklin Cudjoe bemoaned the President’s lack of “recourse to the education sector performance report” adding that the policy is “completely shambolic, there is no coherence.”
IMANI Ghana’s President expressed shock at the misinterpretation of ‘universal access to education’ as stated in Ghana’s constitution to mean ‘free’ by politicians in the country.
He asked, “the fact that universally, we want to end hunger, does it mean every canteen, every chop bar across the world should give food to people free even when they don’t need it?”
Franklin Cudjoe questioned if government plans to pilot the policy to test its effectiveness before it is rolled out nationwide saying, “without any means testing, there is no indication to tell us that we will start off by doing A B C D here, and then we will see whether parents will be happy with it or how we can rationalize; no, nothing.”
According to him, the President made the announcement deliberately to “side track the main issues.”

By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana