Students of UG petition Speaker of Parliament against high tuition fees

Some aggrieved students of the University of Ghana (UG), have voiced out their displeasure about the exorbitant fees being charged by the school authorities.

The students have formally petitioned the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Mike Oquaye to intervene.
They protested what they term as an insensitive increment in their tuition fees and accused the university authorities of arbitrarily increasing fees every new academic year.

They are therefore calling on Parliament to scrutinise the fees before the university is allowed to bill students.
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The Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Mahama Ayariga receiving the petition on behalf of the Speaker, who doubles as the chairman of the Subsidiary Legislation Committee asked public universities to comply with the law by submitting their proposed fees to Parliament.

He said “My committee is meeting on Thursday and I want to assure you that I will present the petition to the entire committee for its consideration and you will hear from us. But I want to assure you that parliament has already raised the issue of the need for the universities through the Ministry of Finance to bring their proposed fees for consideration. We have not yet received that from the Ministry of Finance.

“We have some information that some universities have started submitting their proposed fees to the National Council for Tertiary Education, I believe for onward transmission to the Minister of Education and then Minister of Finance,” he said.
He added that “Now I want to join you to appeal to the universities to comply with the law and present their proposed fees to parliament for consideration. I believe that if they move fast with some demonstration of good fate, the committee might sit during recess to consider proposals so that when parliament is recalled for any other business, there will be opportunity to re-lay it.”
The petition was also copied to the Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education.