Ensure timely payment of allowances to foreign students
All over the world, there is a growing interest in sponsoring international higher education and governments go to great lengths to award scholarships to their citizens to study abroad.
Advertisement
Governments do this mainly to foster greater expertise in important fields that would help their citizens to be of greater benefit to their home countries on their return.
In Ghana, like other countries, many beneficiaries have gone abroad to study in areas where domestic training is not available or perceived not to be of ‘world class’ standards and have returned home to help in the development of the country.
Such sponsorships have promoted the acquisition of international experience, which has contributed to organisational reform and better performance back home. In spite of the benefits, Ghana government scholarships appears a nightmare for many a Ghanaian student abroad.
There have been regular reports of students on government scholarships abroad who have become stranded because their fees and other allowances and stipends have not been forthcoming.
The latest report of 10 Ghanaian students who were stranded in Serbia, Ukraine, Macedonia and Morroco but who thankfully received their allowances last Friday, is a case in point.
Survival on a foreign land is not an easy task even for those who live and are engaged in gainful employment there. And so the picture becomes more discomfiting for a student living in a land where he or she has no one to turn to.
Apart from the personal discomfiture that this presents, one can also imagine the psychological trauma that this presents with attendant consequences for studies.
Clearly, no student can give his or her best when confronted with the challenge of lacking feeding resources or being heckled for non-payment of school fees.
The Daily Graphic is of the view that the time has come for the state to take a serious look at the recurrent instances of this situation and take proactive steps to address it once and for all.
While not discounting the importance of these training programmes abroad, the Daily Graphic thinks that the state is not compelled to undertake such an exercise if it lacks the resources to do so efficiently.
On the other hand, it should be possible for the state to fall on and enlist the support of corporate organisations in the training of people abroad should the need arise. That should provide a more convenient and attainable option rather than what the situation currently is.
Studying at higher level does not come easy and it is pertinent that all the support systems towards lessening the challenge that comes with it must be provided in order to make the purpose of sending Ghanaians abroad for studies worthwhile and hassle-free.