By Nathaniel Nartey
Facebook: Nathaniel Nartey
Twitter: @Annertey_Nartey
The Ministry of Education has set a target of ensuring operationalisation of the Community Day School-e-Block in Aflao by next academic year, which it says is currently 96 percent complete.
The Aflao E-Block generated controversy when a Chief in the area gave a 4-month ultimatum to the Minister of Education to complete the school, which he said had been abandoned since 2016.
Public Relations Officer for the Ministry, Akwasi Kwarteng, told Nathaniel Nartey that the Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, was surprised at the impression created that the E-Block in Aflao had been abandoned for the past 5 years. He said nonetheless, the focus of the Ministry is to complete all abandoned projects which include the E-Block in Aflao.
“Today we are having a conversation and we all agree that the building is at 96%. It cannot just be a mere coincidence or a miracle that all of a sudden the building built itself…..and for us, we will continue to ensure that the work goes on and hopefully we should be looking at even capturing it under the computerised school selection system this coming academic calendar in February 2022. We are hoping to operationalise it by then.”
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education has terminated the contracts for 27 E-Blocks across the country for various reasons. These include the absence of budgetary allocation for the projects as well as the Contractors’ inability to execute the projects. This is after the Ministry charged GETFund to undertake an audit of all projects when President Akufo-Addo took office. The audit revealed more than 300, 900 projects abandoned by the previous administration. Public Relations Officer for the Minister, Akwasi Kwarteng said 124 E-Block projects were started by the NDC government, which is contrary to the widely held reports of 200. Mr. Kwarteng said Dr. Osei Adutwum has overseen the operationalization of 60 E-Blocks since taking office.
“It was discovered that 3,987 have been abandoned and out of these projects this administration has been able to mobilise funds to complete 1,001 of them and so it is the deficit that is where the E-block project is included…..the uncompleted projects have been put in 3 categories, the first is those above 60% completion like the one in Aflao. Then there is the category above 25% to 60% complete(16 of them). When you do the calculations you will know that it will be left with 27 of them which have been terminated…..there is no cause for alarm, we have rather saved the state money,” Mr. Akwasi Kwarteng stated.
