The Deputy Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Freda Akosua Prempeh, has opined that former President John Mahama and his running mate, Prof.Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang cannot be given the nod to rule the country because all they will offer is a ‘try and error’ government.
In an exclusive interview with Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show, she defended her point by stating that the erstwhile Mahama government made a bad decision of cancelling teachers’ trainee allowance but has made a U-turn on such a decision, signalling a try and error government.
“Now that the decision on teachers’ trainee allowance has hit back on them, they are trying to capitalize on it. President Mahama told us he was never going to restore the allowance again. So what is he going to tell the teachers now?
President Mahama and Prof.Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang have now realized their mistake and they now want to use a try and error method of governance. They now want an opportunity to correct their error when the country is now moving forward”, she said.
While she expressed her excitement at Prof. Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang accepting the challenge of a running mate, she was of the view that the professor had not done enough to promote gender equality and the welfare of teachers during her tenure as a minister of education.
“Everyone who is mandated to do a job is assessed based on his or her strengths, capabilities and competence. I won’t agree that she is competent in terms of her work when she was given an opportunity to serve as an education minister. She is an academician who was put in charge of the Ministry of Education. However, her work is not satisfactory especially in the area of gender equality.
As an education minister, couldn’t you advise your president on certain issues such as the teachers’ trainee allowance when you were at the helm of affairs?”
Hon. Freda Akosua Prempeh noted that the ruling New Patriotic Party is that party that could be trusted to bring development to Ghanaians in the next four years.
In 2014, President John Dramani Mahama gave full backing to the decision by the Ministry of Education to cancel the payment of the age-old teacher–trainee allowance and replace it with the students’ loan scheme.
At the time, he said the decision, which was taken to ensure uniformity in financing tertiary education, was paying off with the enrolment of students in teacher training institutions going up from 9,000 to 15,000 in the first year.
Going into the 2020 elections, however, former President John Dramani Mahama says he would not cancel the payment of teacher and nurses’ trainee allowances.
By: Alberta Dorcas N D Armah