We commend the move by President Julius Maada Bio to fulfill a pre-election promise to provide free tertiary education for three (3) children of teachers who have taught for ten years and above.
Teachers, who meet these criteria, are urged to forward applications to the Ministry of Tertiary and Higher Education with the pin codes and birth certificates of their three children. This, according to Government, is the only condition for the award of the scholarship.
When one hears the new pronouncement by the President, what comes to mind is the rush by the New Direction Government to continue to make pronouncements, which have dire economic consequences and will almost not take effect immediately.
The initial Free and Quality Education package, announced during the elections campaign, had to be scaled down by the President after having realized that government could not meet the cost involved.
Even after these pronouncements, we continue to see more, such as payment for University forms, payment of fees for students offering sciences and quite recently payment of university fees for three children of teachers who have served for ten years.
All of these pronouncements are being made when the critical issue of teachers remains unresolved and the economic situation of the country continues to dertiorate.
President Bio has more time to fulfill his campaign promises and should not be in a hurry to do everything in one year thereby unnecessarily creating a burden for the battered economy.
His pronouncements are good, but many, who have closely followed him, have noted that he has more issues to solve, which are almost immediate.
The Government has recently produced an ambitious development, costing over USD7.70 billion for a period of five years and the plan already has a financial gap of USD1.83 billion.
Time is not on the side of the government to catch up with the rolling out of this plan, so why not concentrate on the eight clusters of the plan, which have its goals rather than concentrating on making more pronouncements that are very costly and have huge financial considerations?
It is very much like the Government is biting more than it could chew.