Scholarship scheme overhauled – New bill to go before Parliament soon

A new scholarship bill to come soon as the Ghana Scholarship Authority Bill will be imposed before Parliament when it conjoins as government takes extreme measures to rebuild the current Scholarship Secretariat.

Haruna Iddrisu, the Minister of Education who made mention of this in Accra, made it clear said the new Bill would put a stop to bias and partiality, and give scholarships to those who genuinely deserve them.

He said, the new arrangements would begin with an effort to build effective and strong facilities for Ghanaian universities, with a new local scheme in addition.

Mr. Iddrisu emphasized that, apart from dealing with bias and partialities, giving scholarships to those who do not deserve the vocal point will be on advantage, and also aid our institutions to build facilities and capabilities that can stand head to head with the rest of the world.

“We will be bringing about, with your support again, what I call the local scholarship initiative,” he stressed that, during the establishment of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) Board of Trustees in Accra last Friday.
“In your formula that you will soon review, I said that some provision be made so that at least each public university in Ghana will have some slight support to help the pursuit of five PhDs locally.

He suggested to the trustees that, they can make this an established aspect of the fund so that in the next four years, we will proudly say that these were PhDs trained by the Ghana Education Trust Fund.
Mr. Iddrisu said“I am happy to note that President Mahama has entreated that as soon as Parliament conjoins, I submit before Parliament a new scholarship bill to fight the negative bias and partiality associated with the award of government scholarship.”

President John Dramani Mahama hopes to correct with the new bill. Because, it has not been a while, the Scholarship Secretariat was charged of providing scholarships to grantees based on negative bias and partiality.

GETFund scholarship
While awaiting the amending of assignments, the GETFund has earmarked an amount of GH¢266.2 million for pursuing and new grantees of its scholarship.
The figure is about a GH¢90.2 million rise on the previous year’s , which was GH¢176 million.
Mr Iddrisu reminded the trustees that they were still a primary and very important source of what went into the scholarship secretariat.