Some artisans in the Bolgatanga Municipality have hailed the New Patriotic Party (NPP) free Senior High School (SHS) policy and said they would go back to senior high school should the NPP win the December election.
The artisans, most of who completed junior high School some years ago with good results but could not continue at the senior high school level because their parents could not afford school fees, said they believe it is not too late to go back to school.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Bolgatanga, the artisans including masons, carpenters, fitting mechanics, tillers and electricians prayed for the NPP to win the 2012 general elections so they could rekindle their hope of continuing their education to the universities and other tertiary institutions.
Mr. Moses Akabere, a 26-year-old plumber who completed the Kasapin Local Authority JHS in 1999, said his parents could not afford the school fees at that time and had to cut short his dream of becoming an engineer in future.
Mr. Akabere said he had not given up with furthering his education and that the implementation of a free SHS policy would allow more Ghanaian youth who hitherto could not further their education to go back to the classroom.
�I still feel I have the urge to learn, but I cannot take care of my family and still pay my fees, so Nana Akufo-Addo�s policy is the best for people like us who are disadvantaged because we could not afford.�
A 23-year- old JHS dropout, Abdul Rahaman Dauda who dropped out of school because his parents could not afford ICT fees, said he was yearning to go back to school and would be glad should he have a second chance.
Dauda, whose mother is a food vender and a driver father, said his ambition was to join the military adding �I want to serve Ghana and this is the opportunity for me and all those who fall in my position�.
Dauda appealed to voters, especially the youth and all those who wish to further their education, to vote for Nana Akufo-Addo so that they could realize their dreams of also benefitting from the free SHS that the NPP is preaching.
Faisal Mahama, 23, a mason apprentice said at his age his interest was to concentrate on his apprenticeship training and has little interest to go back to school.
He expressed the hope that his younger siblings would take advantage of such opportunity to go back to school.
Mr. Henry Adivila, a medical representative for Hills Pharmaceuticals, lauded the NPP policy for free education and said it would not only enhance education but also build the human resource base of the country.
He said the NPP�s free SHS policy had a lot of potency and other political parties are coining their policies around it with the National Democratic Congress (NDC) criticizing it.
Mr Adivila said he had sponsored some few students at the SHS level because they could not afford the basic fees required by the schools.
�All these brilliant students would have gone roaming the streets with consequences if some of us did not intervene,� Mr Adivila said.
He appealed to voters, especially people of northern descent, not to be swayed by the NDC�s propaganda against free SHS and vote for the NPP for better future for their children and generations unborn.
He said students from the north do not readily get access to southern schools that have better learning facilities because of the fees they collect when first years report at school.
Mr Adivila said students from the north do not pay fees and southern schools find it difficult to admit them because of the cash demanded on the first day of admission.
He said the implementation of the free SHS would therefore erase this �sectional discrimination� that has existed for years to give northerners opportunity to also gain admission to top schools like Achimota, the Prempeh College, Mfantsipim and others to improve on the quality of the human resource base of northern Ghana.
The Regional Secretary of the NPP in Upper East, Mr Yaw Mort, said the free SHS policy had all the accompanying plans to improve and expand infrastructure in senior high schools, training colleges, universities and other tertiary institutions to ensure quality education.
Mr. Mort said education was dear to the NPP and it would go every length to ensure that it provides quality, free and compulsory education to Ghanaian children at the basic and secondary levels.
He appealed to voters to trust Nana Akufo-Addo to deliver and vote massively for the NPP �to bring back a sound economy, improve access to jobs and quality of life which the NDC has failed to manage in the last four years.�
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