NUGS endorses Mahama Ayariga’s motion on fees

The National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) has appreciated the Bawku Central MP, Mahama Ayariga for writing to the office of the Speaker to request prior approval to move a motion for the suspension of the payment of admission fees for tertiary students in the 2020/21 academic year.

According to the student-based union, it is a longstanding matter that they have been pursuing but they didn’t get the desired response from the office of the president.

The NUGS Secretary for Education Mr. Stallon Nii Okine asserted that they’ve administered a petition on the matter and duly submitted it before the presidency through the union’s president (Isaac Jay Hyde) but nothing fruitful happened.

He appealed that the President as a matter of urgency should place drastic measures to heeding to their request of a 50% slash of tertiary students academic facility user fees for the 2020/2021 academic year.

Mr. Okine Nii further pointed out that the inability of the Students Loan Trust Funds to give loans to the majority of the students in need of these loans are issues that need critical attention at this period in their lives as students.

He disclosed that the emergence of the Covid-19 has also brought untold hardship on many parents as well as students thereby making it difficult for them to pay their school fees, purchase data bundles to catch up with online lessons, buy school particulars as well as settling their academic facility user fees.

Meanwhile, Mahama Ayariga got legal backing from “Order 50 (3) – The application of the Fees and Charges (Miscellaneous Provisions) Instrument, 2019 (LI 2386), being a financial legislation, can only be suspended by an amendment introduced on behalf of the President.”