The Ministry of Education says it has released a total GH¢50,532,000 this year, for the payment of feeding grants for Colleges of Education throughout the country.
The ministry’s announcement contradicts claims by some members of the Teacher Trainees Association of Ghana (TTAG), that it has not received its feeding grants from government for the past three semesters.
The group attempted to picket at the offices of the Education Ministry and the Ghana Education Service (GES) on Wednesday, to demand the payment of the feeding grants, but were stopped by the Police.
According to a press statement released by the Ministry of Education and signed by the Head of Public Relations, Dan Osman Mwin, the amount released covered arrears for the second semester of the 2014/15 academic year, as well as the first half of the second semesters of the 2015/16 academic year.
The statement said, the Ministry had noted that a request for the outstanding half of the feeding grant for second semester of the 2015/26 academic year, has been made to the Ministry of Finance.
TTAG in an earlier statement copied to citifmonline.com said, “we would like to state our displeasure at the outgoing government for their gross display of negligence and neglect towards the fate of colleges of education and newly trained teachers across the country… the Government of Ghana over the years has treated teacher trainees so poorly and has refused to pay feeding grants to students after the scrapping of the teacher trainees’ allowances and several unfulfilled promises even by top officials like the President and the Vice president.”
Earlier this year, the government scrapped allowances of teacher and nursing trainees, and promised to pay them feeding grants. But according to the President of the Trainee Teachers Association, Ekow Paintsil Djan, the government has not fulfilled the promise.
He told Citi News, “They are owing us for about 3 semesters. For the current first years government owes that GH¢550. For the current level 200, the government owes than GH¢1,200 and those in level 300 government owes them Gh¢1,200 and those that have been posted, government owes them GH¢550.”
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
