The government of Ghana and the Ministry of Education have been given a two-week deadline by the National Association of Institutional Suppliers (NAIS) to pay their outstanding arrears; otherwise, they risk being compelled to take inconceivable action.
The members claim that since 2021, the government has not paid them for 14 batches of the supplies they provided. If this situation is not resolved right away, they claim, they will be forced out of business.
Since the Free Senior High School policy was implemented six years ago, the Association claims that the group has been dealing with a mountain of issues.
The NAIS is made up of companies that supply senior high schools and other institutions across the nation with stationery, food, and clothes such as house jerseys, school uniforms, and outing outfits.
The National President of NAIS, Mr Stephen Oware, said in a press conference in Accra that their membership includes tailors, fashion designers, garment producers, and textile designers who, prior to the implementation of the Free SHS program, were supplying educational materials to the Senior High Schools and Colleges of Education in the nation.
Before the Free SHS was implemented, the pricing of the goods, according to him, “was fixed at the beginning of the academic year after stakeholders’ engagement and in consideration of the market situation and inflationary trends of the year.”
When the Free SHS was implemented in 2017, Mr Oware remarked, the agreement came to an end.
The 2016 pricing that was set has essentially not changed.
“As you are aware the present economic situation and its attendant price hikes have seriously affected our production cost,” he laments.
The President said that the average inflation rate from 2017 to the present, for instance, is 24.4%, and that the dollar, which was GHC3.9 in 2017, is currently hovering around GHC12 as all the production-related elements have not been favourable, leading to abnormally high production costs.
The school uniform materials from Printex Ghana, which were GHC 12.40 per yard in 2017, are now GHC 50.00 per yard, the speaker said, adding that despite all of this, the costs specified for the delivery of the apparel have essentially remained the same.
“We have since 2019 written a series of letters to the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service requesting upward adjustment but to our dismay, there hasn’t been any positive response.
“We have met the Minister a couple of times for a discussion, but we have not made any headway. At our last meeting with him about a few months ago, he admitted the present price hikes and their effect on our production but regrettably remarked that the government’s budget is already tight and that such an increase cannot be catered for,” Mr. Oware revealed.
–NAIS
