Running mate for John Dramani Mahama, 2020 National Democratic Congress Flagbearer, has re-echoed claims that her party never scrapped the controversial teacher allowances during their term in office.
According to Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, the party noted the needs of teacher trainees as far as monies are concerned and therefore made efforts to assist by providing loans twice the amount they were getting as allowances.
Speaking during a ceremony at the Wesley College in the Ashanti Region, the former education minister sought to debunk suggestions that the NDC deprived teacher trainees of their allowances under their government.
She further expressed displeasure about some claims that were made by trainees during the time, to the effect that they had financial difficulties because they were not being given allowances.
“All those who were receiving their allowance, received it till they ended, so the people who came on air saying [because of my allowance, I cannot pay my fees], they were lying, and I was saddened that young people would do that because nobody took their money from them, we gave them the loan that was about twice what they were getting as allowances because we thought they needed more,” Prof. Opoku-Agyemang said in an interview with 3news.
Her comments follow the recent debate about teacher trainee allowances in the face of unpaid allowances for over four months.
There have been threats that trainees may be forced to cater for their own feeding over the non-payment of feeding allowances by the government, following which allowances have been released by the government accordingly.
Source: ghanaweb
