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President John Mahama has emphatically maintained that he will not bow to threat of losing the December polls to restore the teacher trainee allowance. The allowance was scrapped by government in 2014 in spite of intense opposition and protests from teacher trainees.
The government replaced the teacher trainee allowance with a student loan scheme, which it claimed has increased enrollment at the various colleges of education. The flagbearer of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo says he will succor the situation by restoring the allowance when voted into power.
The trainee teachers seem to have bought into the promise of the opposition leader and threatening to vote out the government. But President Mahama appears unperturbed and would therefore not budge to their demands to restore the allowance. Addressing students of the Cape Coast University on Wednesday, he insisted that the allowance would not be reversed like AKufo-Addo wants to do for “partisan politics purposes”.
He said: “For me, better to lose the election on principle than win it on falsehood. And I will not because of political advantage betray the principles I believe in.” The president insisted that the policy is a “matter of social justice”, which his government is convinced will “open more opportunities to the young ones who want to be trained as professional teachers and I stand by that principle”.
To reestablish his position on the allowance, President Mahama again tweeted on the issue on Thursday. “On the matter of trainee teacher allowances, better to lose on principle than win using falsehood. We’ll not reverse the decision”.
By Isaac Essel | 3news.com | Ghana
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