Minister of Education, Matthew Opoku Prempeh says the government has fully paid all contractors in charge of the community day Senior High Schools, popularly known as the E-block schools, started under the Mahama administration.
The Sector Minister told host Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM’s ‘Kokrokoo‘ on Thursday, June 4, 2020 that the erstwhile Mahama government awarded a GHC 900 million contract to the construction companies to establish the E-block schools but failed to pay the contractors.
According to him, it has taken the Akufo-Addo administration to pay off the amount to ensure none of the schools are abandoned but completed for all school children to benefit from the government’s free SHS programme.
“There is no contractor in any Secondary school doing a Secondary school project who is owed by Government of Ghana. I called on them to challenge me and up till now, no one has come out to challenge this. If the school is not yet done, then it is the fault of the contractor but not that we haven’t paid the contractor. We are however cancelling a lot of contracts and award them to different contractors because the NDC gave the contracts to [I don’t want to say NDC contractors] but the contractors are not performing; so no one should blame the government . . . 900 million cedis was the certificates that were signed for work done that the NDC left but we have paid it in full,” he stated.
E-block Schools
Former President John Dramani Mahama, during his administration, promised to establish 200 community day Senior High Schools before the end of his regime.
The former President however couldn’t complete all the schools before Ghanaians voted for a change in 2016 resulting in the election of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Before the inception of the Akufo-Addo government, only about 50 E-block schools had been completed and operational with the rest either at ground level or not constructed.
The incumbent government has continued the project by completing work on seventeen (17) out of 23 selected schools.
The remaining six (6) are at various levels of completion.