The Ranking Member on Parliament’s Education Committee, Peter Nortsu-Kotoe, has expressed reservations about the government’s proposal to lay a bill on Free SHS before Parliament, describing it as unnecessary.
According to him, there is no need for a law to regulate or entrench the Free SHS programme, especially when there is no official policy document on the programme despite requests made to both the previous and current education ministers over the past seven to eight years.
He argued that the constitution already mandates that secondary education, including technical and vocational training, should be progressively made free, a process that began in 2015.
“There is no need for any law to regulate or entrench the Free SHS programme…If you don’t even have a policy on what basis are you going to pass the law?” he questioned.
However, Majority Leader Alexander Afenyo Markin has argued that the enactment of the Free SHS Bill would transform the policy from a mere aspiration into a justiciable right, allowing citizens to seek legal recourse if the policy is not implemented.
The government’s move to enact the Free SHS Bill into law is expected to be vigorously debated in Parliament, with Afenyo Markin, and other government officials expected to justify the need for the legislation.
