Editorial

GETFund achievement worth emulating

The Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) was created in 2000 to support the delivery of quality education to Ghanaians from the basic to the tertiary level.

And it does so through funding policies aimed at ensuring equitable distribution of essential resources for all the levels of education.

Specifically, monies from the Fund are used to provide and maintain academic facilities and infrastructure; give scholarships to gifted but needy students in both second-cycle and accredited tertiary institutions; and to provide student loans.

Besides, the GETFund, through the National Council for Tertiary Education, provides money for training brilliant students to become faculty members and for research and other academic programmes relevant to national development.

Also, it supports other activities that promote education as approved by the sector minister.

The Ghanaian Times congratulates the GETFund on prosecuting its objectives in earnest since its birth and today we specially commend the government for completing projects under the Fund.

Our lead story states the GETFund has, since 2017, completed 2,259 projects across the country.

What enthuses us is that these projects include 1,314 legacy projects, which are the ones inherited from previous administrations, meaning that only 945 of them were initiated by the current administration.

Our joy stems from the fact that we have witnessed instances in the country where political administrations abandon projects of their predecessors and damn the consequence.

We have also seen facilities provided by predecessor administrations left to rot when some maintenance can save them.

Such careless abandonment cuts across all the sectors of the country’s economy.

The current case therefore means that the political leaders have realised the damage done in the past and so are changing the status quo.

If that is the case, then the GETFund example must be replicated in the other sectors of the economy.

That is to say that all projects initiated by all the previous political administrations such as affordable housing must be completed.

Besides, projects that need maintenance must be given urgent attention to save them.

Yesterday, Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s motorway was in the news as deteriorating and this is a blot that must be erased by fixing that national monument.

For the government to initiate 945 educational projects also means that there is the need to constantly initiate projects relevant to national development in all the sectors.

Today, one problem that must be tackled in the interest of national development is postharvest losses in the food sector.

Postharvest losses reduce the incomes of the people in the food chain, especially the farmers.

In addition, they contribute to food scarcity, high prices of food and hunger.

Therefore, it is about the time the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, led by the sector minister initiated projects and programmes to solve the problem.

We expect that the ministry would put up silos for the government to buy and store excess food from the farm gate to eradicate the current situation where farmers painfully look on while their produce go to waste because of lack of market or buyers.

Once again we congratulate the GETFund and say it must not be complacent but push on to force other government agencies, as well as ministries and district assemblies, to emulate it all in the bid to move the country forward..

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