We Can Only Fight This Cancerous Fees with A Single Voice – Nothing More, Nothing Less
Kwaku Asante Bismark
For the past few days, as a journalist, I’ve come across many crying University of Ghana students. Crying for the incessant rise in fees and the decreasing standards and cost of living in this country. It’s sad!
I’ve seen the fee schedule of just a few years ago and my jaws have dropped in sadness and in dismay over the ever skyrocketing fees. It’s terrible. Too bad. That just last two years, residential fees have jumped from GHC 709 to GHC 919, over 20% increase. To some, this may be nothing, of course people are paying a whooping 100 million old cedis (GHC 10,000) to lodge in one in a room air-conditioned and DSTV room at our beloved Pent. So yes, to some what am I talking about.
But let’s not forget the MTN mobile money vendor who is a fee paying Humanity student. Let’s not forget, the scratch card seller whose total residential and academic fees for the next academic year will not be anything less than GHC 2,200 as a regular student neither can we forget that fatherless young man from Tamale with only a ‘dawadawa’-selling mother who may get admission to the prestigious University of Ghana Medical School to pay GHC 2,888 and pay for accommodation too on top nor the Accra City Campus students who will pay not less than GHC 2261 without accommodation, even though their counterparts here on main campus enjoy by far better facilities than them all in a country where the daily minimum wage is 8 cedis, and in many instances less and many do no not earn GHC 500 per month.
This and many stories, haven’t kept my eyelid shut in the quest to quell the ever rising University of Ghana fees. In all this, there’s something I’ve noticed – the SRC seems as powerless as I am. I feel for Daniel Otting and Co, especially the PRO, Eleazar and the many calls he’s are receiving with calm disposition, many of whom are from rude callers. Not entirely their fault though, faced with eminent deferring over these huge fees, you can easily loose your manners.
The SRC needs us all to fight, gear up and soldier on to shove away this menace. I’ve come across many people ready to write petitions to University management – petitions that may never be read. The earlier we unite under one umbrella with a single voice, the better. And like Nimölla when they came for everybody and he didn’t complain, they came for him too and there was no one to fight for him.
The entire education of someone may be dependent on this single fee schedule that has been released one month to school’s reopening. The many who may have their hopes of a University education dashed. Never mind that some of these chances come once and gone, far into the skies, never to return. The many who will defer and never come back to continue and the many whose education will delay – that’s better!
I know the we can start a positive action, a great fight now and maybe even call on students not to pay the fees until an amicable agreement is reached, but at the time you’re publicizing such actions, multitudes would have already paid and you’d be left in the middle of the ocean. The many who call on us to start something, but the same many who will keep mute in hypocritical fashion for only your voice to heard in the woods. They will only cry about this in the closet. It’s sad.
We all, must unite, like the Students of South Africa whose #FeesMustFall campaign got an unprecedented result leading to a policy that has made South African students pay ‘reasonable’ amounts of money. The loud mouth of Kwaku Asante Bismark alone can’t do the trick neither will the 4 SRC Executive Officers, who to the best of my knowledge are fighting a worthy course.
Victory Ascerta
#FeesMustFall