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The Minority New Patriotic Party (NPP) yesterday vehemently opposed the approval of $156 million loan from the World Bank�s International Development Agency for expansion of secondary school facilities and eventually dissented in approving the loan amidst very abrasive exchanges on the flow of Parliament after the Majority used its numerical advantage to approve the loan. The Minority indicated that there are very serious issues that ought to be given a second look especially the amount of $15.9 million that had been voted under the loan agreement for research, monitoring, evaluation and administration as well as other items like sanitary pads, notebooks, school bags, school uniforms, pens and pencils that would be distributed free of charge to senior high school students under a three-year Ghana Secondary School Education Improvement Project by the government. The Minority also thought that the loan agreement should have involved the Select Committee on Education and not only the Finance Committee since the project is wholly about education. After the motion for the approval of loan had been moved, the Chairman of the Finance Committee, who is also the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament (MP) for Ketu North, James Klutse Avedzi, a ranking member of the Finance Committee who is also the NPP MP for Old Tafo, Dr Anthony Osei Akoto, said the loan should be rejected for further scrutiny and due diligence. He added that the intention of the government to spend $500 each on selected 10,400 needy students at the secondary school level as scholarship under the loan must also be properly interrogated. �We don�t want to have a further Brazil or a backlash of the infamous $ 3 billion China Development Bank loan where the taxpayers� monies were either wasted or misappropriated,� he said. Dr Osei Akoto said for the World Bank to determine the sort of items the loan should be used for �is totally unacceptable since it is a facility that the country would pay back eventually. �When it comes to such important financial issues we must try not to be partisan because it affects the nation as a whole irrespective of one�s political affiliation.� The NPP MP for Assin South and a ranking member of Education, Prof Dominic Fobih, also hinted that it is completely wrong for the government to contract loan to buy sanitary pads for students which the budget could easily cater for since loans have to be paid back with interest. The ranking member also raised serious concerns over the unit cost for the construction of 23 new senior high schools in deprived communities under the programme which was quoted as $4.3 million while the cost for the construction of a day senior secondary school promised by government has been pegged at $6 million. The NPP MP for Weija/Gbawe, Rosemund Comfort Abrah, another member of the Education Committee said, �It is very demeaning for female students in secondary school to line up for them to be provided with sanitary pads every now and then. �We can�t just go for a loan to procure sanitary pads for our girls in school. This country must be serious.� She added that there is already a monitoring and evaluation unit at the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service, and therefore, the huge amount voted for research, monitoring and evaluation is a waste of money. The breakdown of the loan agreement is that 23 new secondary schools would be constructed at a total cost of $98.9 million, 75 existing senior high schools would be upgraded at a total cost of $9 million, 50 existing schools would be expanded to increase capacity to admit more students at a total cost of $16 million while $15.6 million would be used to provide scholarship to 10,400 students to pursue secondary education with each student receiving $500 for an academic year.