National Union of Ghana Students, NUGS, the biggest students� interest championing body in the country, has issued a two week ultimatum to Government to withdraw all austere measures which it says are inimical to students.
The union made its points clear at a news conference held in the national capital Accra Thursday where it enumerated a number of concerns it dared government to address or face their wrath.
Addressing the conference, it�s Education and Democratization Secretary, Bismarck Akuamoah, asked government to stop attempts to halt the payment of subsidies to the country�s tertiary institutions.
He said the NUGS had cited documents directing public tertiary institutions to begin paying their own utilities and other bills hitherto paid by government.
�We are saying that the withdrawal of some of these subsidies from our tertiary institutions is worrying. A case in point is the University Of Cape Coast where Social Science students who paid some GHc700 will now be paying within the range of GHc2000 to GHc3000,� he stated.
The union also raised issues with government�s nonpayment of statutory VAT contributions into the Ghana Education Trust GETfund which has been in red for several months.
�We are saying that the Act that makes provision for the GETfund makes provision for a certain percentage of the VAT component to be transferred into the Fund account which according to our research has not been done,� he bemoaned.
Another issue of concern the union raised was what it described as government�s indifference towards the reconstitution of education aligned boards including BODs of the Students Loans Trust Fund and the GETfund.
NUGS also reiterated its demand for government to reconsider the reinstatement of the scrapped allowances for teacher and nursing trainees.
It has given government up to two weeks to address its concerns and �within these two weeks show commitment that they are willing to address these issues.�
It has threatened a series of protests including legal actions to compel government to heed their demands.
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