MP for Dome-Kwabenya, Sara Adwoa Sarfo
From 2012 to 2018, GETFund spent GHS 425,698,937 on scholarships for 3,112 beneficiaries, out of which 2,217 persons were granted scholarships to study abroad. Shocking??? This is the findings of the Auditor General, 20 good years after the creation of the GETFund.
HISTORY OF GETFUND
When the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) proposed for the establishment of an education levy (tax) and a trust to manage that particular revenue, NUGS had embarked on series of demonstrations, against the high cost of tertiary education in Ghana and the dilapidated nature of educational facilities in the country.
So, the government embraced the NUGS proposal, got the GETFund law (Act 851) passed in year 2000, and crafted the law to ensure that all the GETFund investments are made in Ghana to help solve the problems that NUGS demonstrated against: acute problems of the education system in Ghana (infrastructure and affordability).
THE GETFUND LAW
Specifically under Act 581 regulation 2(a) GETFund was to distribute moneys to various institutions under the Ministry of education to help execute projects in various schools describing them as "essential academic facilities and infrastructure....especially in tertiary institutions".
On the now scandalous issue of scholarships, the GETFund law deliberately limited the fund managers to support the Ghana Scholarship Secretariat with funds that will cater for Ghanaian students seeking to study in Ghana (not abroad).
Regulation 2(b) of the Act ordered GETFund administrators:
"To provide supplementary funding to the scholarship secretariat for the grant of scholarships to needy but brilliant students for studies in second cycle and accredited tertiary institutions IN GHANA".
There is no other function under the law that provided discretionary powers to the GETFund managers to turn their secretariat into a scholarship awarding institution, talk less of having discretion to invest our taxes in foreign universities.
CONDEMNATION OF THE GREED
As Sampson Lardi Ayenini has described those defending the GETFund managers and their cronies, as "people who don't fear God", I am in good company to suggest that the likes of Parliamentarian Mathew Opoku Prempeh (NAPO), Parliamentarian Adwoa Sarfo and their ever willing conspirator Sam Gariba are representatives of the axes of evil in this country.
These axis of evil betrayed public trust in not ensuring that GETFund invested in improving infrastructure in Ghanaian schools.
These evil public officials didn't bother to ensure that needy Ghanaian students studying in Ghanaian schools are those being sponsored by the scholarship secretariat with funds from GETFund.
Motivated by their evil minds, these people ensured that GETFund pumped our taxes into foreign universities, providing an opportunity for them to also take advantage to apply and go to study abroad, even as Parliamentarians.
At a time that they were supposed to fight for their constituents to get good educational infrastructure and scholarships for the needy, these evil minded politicians were fighting for themselves to have few weeks of studies in expensive universities abroad: A clear violation of the GETFund Act and a rude abuse of the social contract they had with the good people of Ghana.
THE WAY FORWARD
Evil minded Mathew Opoku Prempeh and Evil minded Adwoa Sarfo must resign from public office immediately, whilst Sam Gariba and other GETFund officials are arrested and arraigned before court for breaking Act 581 and therefore causing financial loss to the state.
Without such high standard of condemnation which must lead to resignations and swift arrest, prosecutions and punishment of such public officials, Ghana will continue to fail.
DEATH PENALTY
If you remember how a dilapidated school building recently collapsed and killed three school kids near Ajumako in the Central Region, (at a time that GETFund moneys were being paid to Harvard University in the US), you will agree with me that we must immediately pass a law to introduce the death penalty, as the only punishment for public officers who betray public trust and abuse our laws, in such unpatriotic circumstances.
When public execution of such evil men and women begin, people will go into public office with fear of the law, fear of the punishment (death) and fear of the accompanying disgrace
as the one whose greed led to deaths of innocent Ghanaians and as such was also executed in public by the state.
Families will then continuously caution their members who go into public to live patriotic and exemplary lives that will bring honor to themselves and the country, instead of public execution.