President Nana Akufo-Addo at St. Mary’s SHS in Accra on Tuesday
Beneficiaries of the Free Senior High School (Free
SHS) policy have promised to make President Akufo-Addo proud with a sterling
performance in their final examinations.
During a visit to St. Mary’s Senior High School
in the Ablekuma South Constituency in Accra to inspect projects as part of the
President’s tour of the Greater Accra Region, the Headmistress of the school,
Grace Mensah Eshun, told the President that “a promise from the students to you
is that they will work very hard to make you proud; they are grateful to you.”
“But for the Free SHS policy many of them would
not have had access to senior high school education,” she added.
She later appealed to the President to help put
up a new fence wall for the school to replace the current one which she said
was not only short but also weak.
The headmistress asked for the storm drain in
the school to be covered and also appealed for a big bus to convey the students
to programmes.
President Akufo-Addo promised to deliver all
three requests to the school in the coming months to serve as motivation for
the students, management and staff.
“Madam Headmistress, rest assured the stronger
fence wall, the covering of the storm drain and the bus are all going to be
here within the next two or three months ahead of us,” he promised.
He threw an open challenge to SHS students,
especially the first batch of beneficiaries, who would be taking their final
exams between May and June next year to work hard and pass well to silence
detractors of the Free SHS policy, some of whom he said were waiting for the
NPP government to fail so they could make mockery of the policy.
“It is not everyone in this country that is
happy about this Free SHS policy that the NPP government and I are pursuing. There
are political forces in our country that are strongly opposed to the policy.
They began by saying that it was a gimmick. They then said that it could not be
done for another 20 years. They then said it was too expensive and now they are
telling us that when they come back to power, only God knows when, they are
going to review it. The word review means cancel,” the President fired.
He was optimistic that “the people of Ghana are
not going to stand by and watch these people come back to power to destroy the
Free SHS policy.”
“What I am hoping for and I am sure you will fulfil
is that in the exams that you are going to do in May and June next year,
conduct yourself in such a way that everybody will see that indeed the Free SHS
policy is a positive policy for the country and shame all the detractors and
those who did not want it to happen,” he pointed out.
From St. Mary’s, the President went for a brief inspection of ongoing works on the construction of storm drains at Odawna, near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, and proceeded to cut the sod for the construction of a model Science-based Senior High School, near the Weija Water Treatment Plant.
By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent
