GETFund must fulfil promise

Ghana is a place where certain public projects stall and can remain so forever or until who knows when.

If you do not believe this, take an inventory of state projects from the time of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of the country, and you would drop all your doubts.

Some of the projects have stalled for diabolical political reasons, while others are so because of lack of funds.

Whatever the case, in one instance, stalled state projects represent one of the ways through which state funds go to waste, especially when they are not continued at all.

In another instance as where they are continued, revaluation increases their initial cost, which is also tantamount to losing money in a way because that extra money spent on the same project could have been used on another project to enhance the country’s development.

However, the Ghanaian Times thinks the continuation of projects ultimately is better than leaving them to rot.

This is why it receives as good news the decision by the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) to commit a total of GH¢2.6 billion to contractors to complete the Fund’s stalled projects across the country out of more than GH¢ 3.9 billion approved by Parliament for the financing of educational infrastructural projects for this year.

To have 3,606 GETFund projects stalling at all levels of the country’s education system – basic, second cycle and tertiary – is something serious and worrying.

This is so because the stalled projects include all the critical facilities needed for effective school administration, effective teaching and learning, and peaceful stay in the schools.

These include classrooms, libraries, assembly halls/auditoriums, dormitory/hostels, dining halls, sanitary facilities, and staff accommodations.

It is the hope of everyone that the GETFund will make good its professed determination to complete a chunk of the stalled projects in order to enhance the administration of educational institutions and thereby improve education delivery to the desired quality level.

To this end, we also join the Fund in its appeal to all its collaborators like the district assemblies, as well as other

stakeholders in the education sector, to offer the needed assistance to make it achieve its laudable mission.

That assistance would definitely encourage the Fund to rise to the occasion and prove to the whole world that it was not giving a lip-service but was truly determined to deliver one of its functions.

Now, the contractors going to execute the projects and the state engineers supervising them must note that all eyes are on them for quality work; shoddy work, which is a reflection of corruption in the execution of the job, must cease forthwith.

Accountability awaits every one of them, and even if they are not prosecuted, their conscience will prick them forever.

All said, the Ghanaian Times notes with delight the fact that the GETFund is going to use part of the remaining GH¢1.2 billion of the amount approved for it to offer scholarships.

Our appeal is that the scholarships would be offered truly needy people and not people who have connections in high places.