The Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) has urged contractors executing projects under the fund to strictly comply with the specifications of the initiatives.
It said the fund was very stringent on value for money and would hold contractors to the highest form of quality delivery.
The Administrator of the GETFund, Paul Adjei, who made this known during an interaction with the media at the weekend, observed that there were lots of shoddy work scattered across the country and, therefore, the GETFund would be tough on how contractors delivered projects it financed.
In that regard, Mr Adjei said the fund was liaising with Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs), the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies, government and the National Security to ensure that contractors did not just collect money and provide anything.
“We are going to be very stringent on value for money because if we sit in our offices and allow the RCCs to award contracts, and we say we are only providing financing, tomorrow, we will wake up and structures are collapsing, being gutted by fire, or roofs are ripping off,” he said.
Students ID
Touching on some new initiatives, Mr Adjei stated that the administration was partnering with Access Bank and others to introduce national student identity cards, which would also serve as payment cards for students across the country.
“What it does is that now, students in the boarding houses will have their parents send them money onto the card because the students do not have smartphones for parents to be sending them money through mobile money while in school,” he explained.
Similarly, he said, the Students’ Loan Trust Fund was also on board so that loans payable to students in tertiary institutions were paid through the payment card.
“We are also creating an ecosystem of merchants, retailers and service providers, where students who have those cards can buy things at a discount,” Mr Adjei added.
Fundraising
The GETFund administrator further said his outfit had set up a fundraising department to court the partnership of corporate Ghana, companies and specific individuals willing to support the cause of national development to complement the support the fund gets from the government.
Through that initiative, he said, the GETFund envisaged providing dormitories and increasing capacities in the classrooms.
“We are getting the companies to support the government to provide infrastructure and scholarships to the various institutions and individuals,” he added, saying as part of the initiative, “we approached the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and they are gladly supporting us with a tax write off for companies that will invest in our fundraising initiatives.”
“Today, we have got companies providing some funds and another providing solar, so we can take some schools off the national grid,” he said.
Scholarship
On scholarships, Mr Adjei said, “For the first time, we have identified certain institutions and are supporting them to build capacity for their people.”
Notable among these institutions, according to Mr Adjei, were the Ghana Police Service, Ghana Immigration Service, the Ghana National Fire Service, the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), the Ghana Prisons Service and the Judicial Service, which he said had been given 100 scholarships.
He said his outfit was also ready to offer similar support in terms of scholarships to the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), pointing out that the support to the institutions was a way of recognising their important contributions to society.
“The scholarship is for Ghanaians, so it is also an opportunity for us to see how we can access it to build the capacities within organisations or the communities you come from,” he stated, and stressed the need for strong support from the media since such feedback would help the GETFund to grow and chart the right path.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh