Why haven’t you review Free SHS until now if you had plans? – NPP’s Philip London asks Oppong Nkrumah

Member of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Philip London has questioned why government have not reviewed the Free SHS policy up until now if they had plans to so.

“Yesterday, I heard my friend the Minister for Information saying that he himself has issued a statement as far back as 2022 or 2021, ….. that the government was going to review free SHS. This is what the Minister for information announce yesterday,” he said.

“He was actually defending it that nobody should say that because the IMF said it, that is why we are going to do it. That, the government himself had issued a statement that it will be reviewed but my question is, if we had issued a statement that we are going to review ourselves, why haven’t we review it?, he questioned.

Mr London was speaking on Pan African TV‘s Good Morning Africa on Thursday, May 25, monitored by GhanaPlus.com.

Oppong Nkrumah responds to IMF’s criticism of Free SHS

His question followed a recent comment made by the Minister of Information, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah that the review of the Free SHS have always been on the table together with other flagship programmes.

The Information Minister was responding IMF’s criticism of the programme introduced in 2017  by the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo government.

The Bretton Woods institution in it May 2023 country report on Ghana described the Free SHS  as poorly targeted adding that the government had promised to “review all government flagship programmes and publish a strategy to decide their future course.”

But Mr Oppong Nkrumah in an interview with JoyNews said  “To be honest this is not the first time that we have made and publicly expressed this intention and this commitment. So it covers all the sixteen flagship programs and it is a constant exercise of looking at the efficiency in terms of the spend, can we make some savings in terms of the spend, how much effectiveness are you achieving for every cedi you are spending on it and in terms of the value for money are you getting every cedis worth for what you are spending on.”

Source: GhanaPlus.com