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Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has reiterated the New Patriotic Party’s promise to restore the scrapped allowances for trainee nurses and teachers when voted into power in 2016.
According to government, the allowance had outlived its usefulness and had also curtailed enrollment which has now improved since it was scrapped.
There had been several student protests to get the allowance restored, but government has insisted on maintaining the new policy. But the NPP has argued the policy is not friendly and will only burden trainees.
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Dr Bawumia believes government’s mismanagement of the country’s resources is to blame for the non-payment hence its decision to scrap it.
See also: Teacher motivation allowance abolished
"We will restore the teacher and nursing training allowances – for us, it is non-negotiable. Every nation must prioritize certain sectors at every point in time and invest the necessary resources to reap maximum benefits and, for the NPP, Ghana today needs to invest every necessary resource in education to give us the quality human resource we need to win the globally competitive economic battle," he said.
Dr. Bawumia made these remarks at the Dambai College of Education (DACE) in the Volta region.
"In the government’s desperation and recourse to a fixation on taxation and unfortunate cuts in the hope that it would fill the hole they have sunk the Ghanaian economy into, they have also cancelled the all-important Teacher Trainee Allowances. It is instructive to note that this policy, like the many other desperate schemes, was introduced around 2013 and 2014 after the Government had recklessly borrowed and overspent in the 2012 Election year leading to double digit fiscal deficits in 2012 and 2013.
"When you are desperate and when you find yourself in a hole, any idea will sound great to you because you have very limited options. It is therefore not surprising the number of desperate schemes and policies this government keeps innovating in attempt to climb back up from the hole," Dr Bawumia stated.
Meanwhile, government has increased the students’ loan from GH¢668 to GH¢1,600 every semester for students pursuing programmes in accredited tertiary institutions.