Yesterday on the front page of the Daily Graphic, President of the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS), Mrs Cecilia Kwakye Cofie, urged government to, as a matter of urgency, release subsides which have been in arrears for three terms to Senior High Schools (SHSs).
According to Mrs Kwakye Cofie, failure on the part of government to act with a sense of urgency on this matter could lead to the premature closing down of SHSs in the country.
The president of CHASS was reported to have revealed this worrying development at the 68th Speech and Prize-giving Day of Winneba SHS in Winneba last Saturday.
“The major challenges confronting SHSs are the arrears and subsidies, release of payment of scholarship to second and third-year students and the renege on the part of the government to supply food to the schools,” Mrs Kwakye Cofie pointed out.
Equally worrying about the Daily Graphic story is the fact that though SHSs heads had engaged government on the matter, nothing concrete appears to be forthcoming.
And though this is quite worrying, Today must state bluntly that that has clearly been our attitude to pressing national issues. We always wait till we are overwhelmed by issues before we act.
The question we are often ask is that why must we keep long in responding to some of these issues of national interest? Certainly, such an approach to addressing national issues must not be encouraged!
Interestingly, it is same with looming disasters in this country. We only act when disaster strikes.
It is in the light of the above that Today is calling on government to treat this matter with the seriousness that it deserves. We even want to suggest to government to meet the schools half-way by defraying part of the arrears. This, we believe, will help cushion them for the time being
In fact, it will be a shame to see our SHSs closed down because of government’s indebtedness to them and especially when government has started with the implementation of its free SHS policy. Therefore, government must act immediately to save our SHSs from being closed down.
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