General News of Friday, 14 July 2017
Source: classfmonline.com
2017-07-14
File photo; University of Ghana, Accra City campus
Students of the University of Ghana, Accra City campus, are protesting against increments in tuition fees.
According to them, the university authorities have continually increased fees, a development they say compounds the hardship they have been enduring.
According to them, while business administration students at the City Campus are paying GHS3,234 for tuition fee, their colleagues on the main campus at Legon are charged GHS1,272.
The students have, therefore, demanded a review of the 2017/18 academic year fees or they petition parliament.
Speaking to Jonas Ofori-Yeboah on 12Live on Class91.3FM on Friday, 14 July, 2017, the spokesperson of the students, Avemegah Julius Kobla, said: “We are not at peace with this at all. As a matter of fact it is disheartening to us. It has been going on for years and now we don’t want to take it at all. The fee has to be reduced…we can’t take it anymore. Our concern is the difference between us and those on the main campus. The fee is GHS3,234 for business administration students here while those on the main campus pay GHS1,272. A margin of GHS2000 is too huge.”
The SRC President of the City Campus, Nana Akufo-Addo, said a lot of students discontinue their courses due to the exorbitant fees charged and so he had directed students to refrain from paying the fee until there was an agreement between the authorities and the student leadership.
“The University of Ghana, Accra City campus, has always been charged a lot of fees, an exorbitant amount of increment that has left in one way or the other students to defer their courses and most of them to discontinue their academic journey,” he said, adding: “We want to submit a petition to the office of the Speaker of parliament that we should reconsider, through the subsidiary legislation committee of parliament and pursuant to Article 793 of Ghana’s Act of Parliament, to at least consider a review. That is, allow the university authorities to submit the fees to parliament for effective deliberations and if things turn out to be the same, then it will be enough for us to pay. But as it stands now, I’ve made it clear to students that all of them should refrain from payment for now until this is resolved.”
