By: Franklin ASARE-DONKOH
The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch) an education think tank, Mr. Kofi Asare, has called for a performance audit of the government’s free Wi-Fi usage in Senior High Schools (SHS).
According to Mr. Kofi Asare, most of the schools where these facilities are have been off the free Wi-Fi for six months now, while others have not accessed it for the past year.
“Where you have about 75% of Senior High Schools not getting internet, it means that there’s a high risk of low efficiency and low value for money. That is why we have requested the Auditor-General to conduct a broad performance audit into the entire programme serving about 1000 educational institutions. Some of the schools have been off the internet for the past year,” Mr. Asare said this in an interview.
He indicated that only 25% of the schools are connected to Wi-Fi.
Eduwatch in its latest report disclosed that the free Wi-Fi programme has been found to be malfunctioning in about 75% of sampled senior high schools.
The Executive Director of Eduwatch on the back of this is calling on the Auditor-General to conduct an extensive and expanded audit into the usage of free Wi-Fi emphasizing that most of the students in the various schools are unable to access the facility to aid their studies.
“In some of the schools we sampled, there was no Wi-Fi. In order to get value for money for the GH¢6.3 million paid to Busy Internet, it’s incumbent on the Ministry of Education to ensure that before the government pays money every month for the provision of Wi-Fi services, we must have a mechanism to ascertain that all the institutions under the contract are receiving internet, and to ensure that the schools receive the right internet specifications as contracted” he added.
Busy Internet Ghana Limited was tasked with the installation of Wi-Fi equipment and provision of Internet facilities to 717 Senior High Shools, 16 Regional Education Offices, 46 Colleges of Education (CoEs), and 260 District Education Offices.