We are marching forward with free SHS – Akufo-Addo

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has called on Ghanaians to disregard attempts by critics of the Free Senior High School policy and support it.

He said the policy is one of the most important undertakings by his administration towards developing the human resource of the nation, and that the programme would receive unlimited support.

“We are marching forward with free SHS and we are not going back… My opponents, instead of supporting the initiative and joining hands, spend the whole time criticising it, it’s a pie in the sky… he cannot do it… he is deceiving Ghanaians,” President Akufo Addo said.

The President said this when he interacted with students of the Nkwanta Senior High school in the Oti Region as part of a working visit to newly created regions in the country.

He said the policy had increased enrolment in schools and urged opponents of the policy to desist from baseless criticisms.

“Now, we have done it. They say I should have waited for the entire infrastructure to be in place.”

“Ghana is moving forward. All those people who want to draw us back, I’m saying, the Ghanaian people want to go forward. Forget it!” President Akufo Addo said.

He said the government was working to provide the needed school infrastructure with a focus on dormitories and classroom blocks to end the double track system.

President Akufo-Addo later cut the sod for the construction of a 300-bed girls’ dormitory, a six-unit classroom block, and a six-seater toilet facility under GETFund for the school.

Mr Wisdom Annang, the headmaster of the school said the free SHS programme had increased enrolment in the school by 30.8 per cent.

He said the school, which was established in 1975, now had a student population of 1,898 and appealed to the President to provide a boys dormitory, an assembly hall complex, and a school bus.

Mr Annang noted that the School had cultivated 11 acres of its farmland, and would need a tractor to contribute to the Planting for Food and Jobs programme.

President Akufo-Addo said he was impressed with the emphasis; schools in Ghana placed on developing agriculture and pledged to provide a tractor and a bus for the school as soon as possible.

He also said his administration would complete the dining hall complex abandoned by the previous government in 2011.