The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch), Kofi Asare, has called on the Ministry of Education (MoE) to produce annual reports on infrastructure development projects initiated in the education sector.
He stressed that while social media may be seen as a convenient platform to share pictures of projects, for evidential and reference purposes, the MoE and Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) should be publishing annual reports on their websites for stakeholders including citizens, CSOs and journalists to reference and use as a source of data.
He lamented that the Education Ministry and GETFund – the two key agencies in charge of infrastructure development projects in the country – have refused to update the public with annual development reports since 2018, which has led to a lot of speculations and lambasting from the public in terms of development projects in the sector.
“As the prime infrastructure agents in the education sector, the two agencies have never published a single annual report on their website since 2018. When Eduwatch started conducting the Open Governance Assessment on Education Sector Institutions, our recommendations on reporting have not yielded any positive outcome,” he said.
Touching on the allegation that not a single infrastructure project has been construed from the US$1.5billion Senior High School (SHS) loan received from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he indicated that there are many new SHSs constructed and being constructed, including the Bosomtwi Girls Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) SHS.
However, the apex agencies have failed to give an account of their projects for reasons best known to them, making it very difficult to identify and list each project and the funding source.
“Just like the Auditor-General, the MoE can have a separate but composite report on education infrastructure alone, from basic to tertiary, covering all funding sources including GETFund, District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF), MoE Budget, donors, private sector, Internally Generated Funds (IGF), as well as the cost per project, location, timelines, etc.
“The separation is relevant because of the high quantum of funds that go into infrastructure, but not necessarily to satisfy political ends,” he emphasised.
