The Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) has promised to pay the fees of some forty Ghanaian students on government scholarship in the United Kingdom who risk being kicked out of school for non-payment of fees by close of day Tuesday.
The announcement follows days of persistent campaign on Citi FM and citifmonline.com about the plight of the students who risk being ejected kicked out of school due to government’s failure to provide the necessary funding to cater for their tuition and subsistence.
Several of the students are studying oil and energy related courses at the University of Dundee and the Robert Gordon University.
One of the affected students, Viramariba Lambert told Citi News, “some of us have resorted to part-time jobs at the expense of studies and it is very hectic. The semester started yesterday and one would wonder how to go to school with a part-time job so the situation is very worrying,” he indicated.
According to the Public Relations Officer of the GETfund, Stephen Baffoe however, the situation of the students will change by close of day because government’s office had received the monies required for the upkeep of the students.
“We received some monies yesterday (Monday) and are making provision to send funds to the schools and also the students and with the arrangements put in place we are very sure that by close of day, we would have substantially sent the funds,” he stated.
Mr. Baffoe told Citi News the schools had given government till March to complete the payment of fees.
“We have had some communication from the schools regarding payment of fees and living allowances for the students. For the fees, we have written to the schools to allow us a little more time to pay the fees and we had a response stating we have up to March to finish with the payment.”
“For the students’ living allowances, we have put together an amount of GHC 3 million to be sent to schools in the UK and USA for living allowances and part of the fees.”
