The West African Examination Council (WAEC) says its inability to pay some invigilators and supervisors is due to the government’s indebtedness of GH¢57.3 million for examinations conducted in 2022 and 2023.
The indebtedness for 2022 is GH¢ 9.9 million while that of 2023 is GH¢47.4 million, comprising GH¢40 million for the main examination and GH¢7.4 million for practical.
The WAEC National Office Director of Finance, Cornelius Azumah, who disclosed this in Accra yesterday, has therefore, assured the service providers that efforts were underway to get the money from the government in order to pay them.
“In 2022, we had to use some fees received for 2023 examination to pay supervisors and invigilators for 2022. We have been following upon that and they promise that they will release funds to add soon so that we can pay the supervisors and invigilators for 2023 and get them ready for 2024 examination,” he said.
“So far we have taken some funds from them and we still have some arrears to receive,” he said in response to a question on the Council’s delay in paying service providers of the examinations conducted in the period.
The press conference was to announce the opening of the WAEC portal for registration of candidates for the three examinations to be conducted by the Council this year.
The Head of Public Affairs of the WAEC National Office, John Kapi, said the portal for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) for school and private candidates, opened on March 11, and costing GH¢214.01 for registration, would be closed on Friday, April 19, 2024.
He said the examination would be written from July 8 to 12, 2024, noting that the school candidates would be examined on the common core curriculum and the private candidates on the old syllabus.
For the West African Secondary School Examination (WASSCE), which would once again be a Ghana only examination, he said, it would be administered from August 5 to September 27, 2024.
“Despite the difference in period for the conduct of the examination, the standard of the examination remains unchanged,” he said.
Mr Kapi cautioned school authorities that they would be sanctioned for registration of non-school/unqualified candidates for school examination and the fabrication of continuous assessment scores for the candidates.
The General/ Advanced Business Certificate Examination (G/ABCE), he said, would be conducted from August 2 to September 2, 2024 and that registration portal, which was already opened, would be closed on April 19.
The portal for the WASSCE for private candidates, scheduled to take place from October 25, to December 18, would be opened from Tuesday, April 2 to Friday, August 30.
Mr Kapi cautioned that the WAEC’s rules and regulations for dealing with cases of irregularity in examination would be applied and thus, stakeholders should be law abiding.
“The Council calls on all and sundry especially stakeholders to ensure that the registration process goes on smoothly,” he said.
BY JONATHAN DONKOR
