Education think tank, Africa Education Watch, has criticised the allocation of GH₵ 350,000 in GETFund resources to Members of Parliament (MPs) for education-related projects within their constituencies.
Speaking to JoyNews, the Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, argued that GETFund has the capacity to directly finance and monitor projects nationwide, making MP-led allocations redundant.
“The challenge emerges because GETFund, as an institution, has the capacity to monitor its projects across the country. So one wonders why we need MPs to monitor GETFund projects,” he stated.
He further explained that constituencies are political electoral units, not administrative ones, and that district assemblies, as the designated administrative bodies, should be responsible for monitoring government projects in their jurisdictions.
“If there’s any need for monitoring support, it should go to the district assembly and not MPs, who are not spending officers,” he stressed.However, Mr Asare clarified that the funds do not go directly to MPs but are instead directed to the district assemblies, which then execute educational activities identified by the MPs as priorities.
He proposed that instead of allocating funds for monitoring, the amount should be added to the emergency project budget, increasing MPs’ available funding to over GH₵ 400,000. Despite this, he noted that even this amount is insufficient for large-scale educational infrastructure projects.
