President John Mahama has promised to complete all the 200 Community Day Senior High Schools he promised, if Ghanaians give him four more years in the December polls.
The President in the run up to the 2012 elections as a key campaign pledge, promised to build 200 new community Day senior High schools in his first term as President.
Speaking at the inauguration of the new Abodoman Community Day Senior High School at Agona Abodom in the Central Region, President Mahama said the full complement of the 200 schools will be delivered if he is given a second term.
“In my next term of office, by the grace of God, we will complete all the 200 new senior high schools that I promised. As I said, currently, 123 are under construction, and that means that the Central Region will receive additional secondary schools among the remaining over seventy schools that we shall build,” he added.
President Mahama further directed the Ghana Education Service to start enrolling students in the community day senior High schools that have been completed and not to wait for commissioning before taking such step.
“With the inauguration of this community day senior high school in Agona Abodom, I am instructing the GES to open all the other completed ones so that children will start learning. Don’t wait for me to come and commission the schools before you start populating them with children.”
“Go ahead and populate the school with children and at the appropriate time when the opportunity presents itself, we will come with the chiefs and we will commission the schools but don’t wait for us to come and commission the schools before you enroll the children, you have my permission to start enrolling the children today,” Mahama added.
First 50 schools In March 2014, President Mahama cut the sod for the construction of the first 50 schools, as part of a total of 200 new Community Day Senior High Schools to be built across the country.
The new schools were to be built as part of government’s commitment to improving access to secondary education and to help implement government’s progressive free senior high school policy.
Currently, 123 are at various stages of completion. 123 SHSs will be completed before Nov President Mahama in March 2016, assured that majority of the 200 schools will be completed before November.
“There are ten ready, the Ministry of Education has to set the date [for the inauguration]. We are building 123 as at now at various stages of completion. Some of them the sites have been handed over, they’ve started the profiling, but the early ones that we started, many of them are in advanced stages of completion.”
“So although we promised 200, we have 123 on-going, many of them will be ready before elections. We are not waiting to finish all before we populate the schools and so as we are finishing the schools and we are handing over to the Ministry of Education, we are putting the children to school,” he added.
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