The Students Representative Council (SRC) President of the Kwadaso Agric College, Kwadaso, in the Ashanti Region, Mr. Stanley Mensah has said that government is only paying lip services to the numerous challenges that they (Agric students) are facing in the country.
Quoting sections of the Ghanaian constitution to back this call for due recognition of the students in agric colleges, the president said that section of the section is not happening.
“As an Agric student and per the 1992 constitution of Ghana, you are entitled to allowances like students of the Teacher Training Colleges and Nursing Colleges across the country and get direct posting after completion unlike students from the universities and polytechnics who are to apply for jobs after their national service. However, this is not happening in the system,” he charged.
Students from the various agric colleges in the country have severally called for the restoration of their allowances, the latest being in October when hundreds of students from five agricultural colleges in the country, besieged the premises of the Agric Ministry in Accra, to demand the immediate release of their allowances.
According to them, several pleas to the Ministry had fallen on deaf ears hence the picketing.
This came on the back of the restoration of allowances of trainee nurses by the New Patriotic Party government.
Allowances of the agric students were scrapped together with that of trainee nurses and teacher trainees by the Mahama government.
But speaking in an interview with Captain Adabugar during the Agric Forum on Saturday pertaining to the challenges they continue to endure, Mr. Mensah said that it is wrong for government to neglect them.
“It is sad for government to totally abandon us without thinking about our allowances and placement after school,” he lamented.
He also added that he and his colleagues have never received any allowances during their years of study in the various Agric Training Colleges.
“I have been a student of the Kwadaso Agric College for the past three (3) years but my colleagues and I have never received any allowances before,” he added.
He described the situation as “very alarming” because most students of the Kwadaso Agric College including him, have regretted reading Agriculture as a course.
This regret he further attributed to “harrowing stories” of extension officers working for the government who have consistently complained of non-receipt of allowances and salaries on time.
Source; Prince Paul Amuzu/ritefmonline.org/princeamuzu667@mail.com
