Deputy Ranking Member of the Education Committee in Parliament, Dr. Clement Apaak, has disclosed that the Education Minister will be summoned by the committee to clarify some misunderstandings regarding the World Bank grants given to the Ministry to train teachers.
Dr. Clement Apaak indicated that there is the need to summon the Minister and others involved since the issue has the capacity of affecting the nation’s further projects as far as grants and the World Bank support to teaching and learning is concerned.
“As a committee, the leadership has decided to summon the Minister for Education, the Schedule Officer on the project, the Director General of the Ghana Education Service and the previous Minister of Education [Dr. Martin Opoku Prempeh] to appear before the committee on Tuesday at 10:0 am to respond so that we can begin to get better understanding with regards to this situation.”
Dr. Clement Apaak
According to Dr. Apaak, the issue is getting a lot more messier by the hour and if the Committee is to go by the explanation that the Minister has given, that in itself raises a number of fundamental questions.
Dr. Apaak raised questions as to why the World Bank sort answers from the Ghana Education Service and not the Ministry with regards to the utilization of the $1.2 Million. He also questioned why the Bank verified whether or not 40,000 teachers were trained, if the Minister claims that the money hasn’t been mishandled.
“Remember that the Ministry by and large is a policy formulation institution. It’s the Ghana Education Service which is the agency under the Ministry that is expected and mandated to implement policies.”
Dr. Clement Apaak
Dr. Apaak was of the view that for GES to have written back to the World Bank four months after the World Bank had waited for a response, letters and particulars from the Minister, the committee presupposes that clearly, something is missing.
“So, if the money was in the account, why couldn’t the Minister write back to the World Bank telling them that the money is in the account? Secondly, how come such a policy or a programme was implemented on the blind side of the Director of Education?
“It has now come to bare the Minister’s attempt to bury these allegations. His predecessor was the person who negotiated this to the World bank and in his statement, he clarified what the World Bank grant was supposed to have been used for, which was to train teachers.”
Dr. Clement Apaak
Minister trying to cover up
According to Clement Apaak, the Education Minister is trying to use the “One Teacher One Laptop” project as a basis to justify and convince the World Bank that the money has been used the way it ought to be used.
“It is because of this that the World Bank sort to seek particulars because they became aware that the nature of the information the Ministry gave was not specific to what was agreed upon and that it was information that was alien to the agreement.”
Dr. Clement Apaak
Dr. Clement Apaak’s comments came after the Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, refuted allegations of corruption in the $1.2million World Bank teacher training programme.
The Minister stated that the ministry pre-financed the training of 41,000 teachers after which the World Bank released the money and denied squandering the funds.
According to the Education Minister, the World Bank has not written to the Ghana Education Education Service or to any of the agencies under the Ministry to confirm the achievements of results. He added that evidence of teachers trained is available on the NTC teacher training platform on the KA Technology platforms.
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