Send Ghana, a non-governmental organization, is urging the government to review the Mahama adminstration’s Free School Uniform Programme in the country.
A Senior Programme Officer at SEND Ghana, Harriet Nuamah Agyemang said on Adom FM’s Morning Show “Dwaso Nsem” Friday that the free school uniform program has failed to achieve the objectives for which it was implemented.
According to her, the organisation understudied 61 schools in 30 districts in the Greater Accra, Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions and found that the programme was fraught with challenges such as poor distribution guidelines, the lack of a credible schools selection criteria, scarcity of data about the programme, among others.
“We have realized in some districts that this free uniform programme is faced with so many challenges and as an organisation our aim is to make sure the right thing is done and so we urge government to immediately review this programme though its already implemented” she said.
Mrs. Nuamah Agyemang indicated that the program has not contributed to the increment of enrollment and attendance of children in schools.
She attributed the failure of the program to achieve set objectives to some challenges faced by the agents in the program and poor documentation of the program.
Some school authorities at the district level she noted also hoard the uniforms because the sizes do not fit their pupils, and therefore, the need to decentralize the distribution of the school uniforms.
Mrs. Agyemang, further called on the government to review the free school uniform initiative for its sustainability to benefit the poor and vulnerable to achieve its objectives.
She added that it is the money of tax payers that is being used in the program and should therefore be managed to yield intended results.
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