Education Minister to appear before Education Committee of Parliament over ‘Placement for Sale’ documentary
The Minister of Education (MOE), Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum is expected to appear before the Education Committee of Parliament on Thursday, February 2.
Dr. Adutwum is expected to respond to the report that his outfit had carried out investigations into secondary school placement bribery a year ago, yet had not published findings and recommendations to the public.
Ranking Member of Parliament’s Education Committee, Peter Notsu Kotoe disclosed this on Newsnight on Tuesday.
“The chairman and myself we decided that we should call the Minister to appear before the committee on Thursday. I am very much aware that the chairman of the committee gave instructions to the clerk of the committee to summon the Minister before the committee on Thursday.
“So tomorrow, we will find out if the correspondent has got to the office of the Minister and what his response is,” he told hosts, Emefa Ampawu and Evans Mensah.
On Monday, a documentary by The Fourth Estate revealed that parents had to pay money to some middlemen for their children to be placed in their preferred secondary school.
On the back of this, in an interview on PM Express on Monday night, the Spokesperson of the Education Ministry, Kwasi Kwarteng, revealed that the Ministry had prior knowledge of the bribery a year before and had ordered investigations into the matter, but failed to publish recommendations of the findings.
Subsequently on Newsnight on Tuesday, January 31, when asked if the Education Committee of Parliament was aware of an investigation and the findings, Mr. Notsu- Kotoe said they were aware of the rumour of bribery which they had told the Minister to look into, but for the recommendations from the investigation, they knew nothing about that.
“Last year, it had come to the attention of the Education Committee of Parliament, and the chairman of the committee went to meet the Minister of Education to inform him of the misgivings of members of Parliament and the public that money was being extorted from parents before changes were done and it was there that he told us that the Director-General had written to the state security agency for investigations to be conducted,” he said.
The ranking member added that Dr. Adutwum, “gave us the assurance that the security agency was going to investigate that he believes there is nothing of that nature so that is where we ended it.
“For the internal committee that they set up at the Ministry we were not aware, I also heard for the first time yesterday during PM express,” he added.
Source: Ghana News
