Ghana National Union of Polytechnic Students (GNUPS) and National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) have both declared their unflinching support for the Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC) decision to embark on a massive demonstration on Wednesday, January 20, 2016.
Organised labour said the pending demonstration is to protest tariff hikes, the imposition of “killer taxes” and the general economic hardship in the country.
The support by tertiary students, according to the Public Relations Officers of GNUPS and NUGS, Elvis Osei Amponsah and Thomas Takyi-Bonsu respectively, is because they are not happy with the introduction of utility levies at the polytechnics and the recent hikes in utility tariffs by government. Speaking on Amansan TV’s flagship programme “Anopa Bosuo,” in Accra yesterday, the two noted that their numerous letters to the government on the petition of tertiary students paying utility tariffs remained unanswered.
Messrs Takyi-Bonsu and Elvis Osei Amponsah said the students could not understand why their predecessors who passed through tertiary institutions did not pay utility tariffs whiles they are being asked to pay.
They said, what surprised them most is the political ideology of government that prides itself as social democratic which political ideologies should ideally be the introduction of social intervention programmes and policies to ease burden on its citizenry.
“Government by its recent posture has with shenanigans gone ultra vires to what it professes to be its political ideology, however, we are calling on government to sit up and innovate ideas that will arrest the ever increasing economic hardship that is being visited on this country especially we the vulnerable ones”, Mr. Osei Amponsah noted.
Mr. Osei Amponsah further asserted that, with the utility levies on polytechnic students, tertiary education in Ghana has finally become a preserve for the rich due to the lack of government’s support for the running of schools.
He recounted the circumstance where many students in recent years have had to make a difficult choice of deferring their programmes due to the inability to pay their fees.
According to him, students in tertiary institutions currently pay directly for everything in connection with their training except the salaries of the lecturers, “which we do through payment of taxes, and government seem not to be bothered about this”.
He averred that, “Ghanaians may recall that President Mahama and his NDC government after an unsuccessful attempt to push a cost sharing policy on utilities down the throats of tertiary Students at the University Of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) forum came out categorically to affirm the status quo of subverting the utilities consumed by tertiary institutions.”
He indicated that GNUPS has since been suspecting that statement as propaganda since management of the country’s institutions keeps singing a discord on whose responsibility is it to pay utilities consumed by tertiary institutions.
They explained that their suspicion of a deceit on the part of government on the matter went further when the Vice Chancellors Ghana attempted to negotiate with students on a charge for utilities this academic year.
They urged President Mahama to do something about increment of utility tariffs else “we shall not fail to remove our foot off the breaks if it fails to apply its breaks first.”
The students served notice to mount a relentless demonstration that will ensure reversals take place especially, with the imposition of utility levies on students.
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