Students on govt scholarship abroad stranded
Ten students on a government of Ghana scholarship abroad are reportedly stranded due to the lack of financial support from the Scholarship Secretariat.
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The students – who are in Serbia, Macedonia, Morocco, and Ukraine – told the Daily Graphic by telephone that they had not been paid their monthly allowances for more than a year.
They claimed that some of them had been ejected from their hostels for failing to meet their financial obligations and were now putting up with friends.
Stranded
According to some of the students, their plane tickets had not been made available for them to return home.
They further claimed that all efforts to have their problem addressed by the appropriate authorities had proved futile.
Denial
When the Daily Graphic contacted the Scholarship Secretariat to ascertain the facts of the issue, the Director of the secretariat, Mr Fuseini Lansah, said the issue was not as critical as was being stated.
He explained that the students were owed some allowances but some money had been sent to clear all outstanding allowances.
“Somewhere in May this year, the government approved the release of money which was disbursed to the various missions to clear those allowances. So, we don’t owe them. As at now, no student is stranded,” he said.
Mr Lansah said as far as feedback from the missions abroad was concerned, all students who had completed their courses had returned to the country.
Confirmation of students’ plight
However, the officer in charge of Serbia and Macedonia at the secretariat, Mr Prince Asante, confirmed that there were some students in those countries who had completed and were supposed to return to the country by June this year.
According to him, the late release of funds three weeks ago to those students made it impossible for them to return.
Meanwhile, in a telephone interview with the accountant at Ghana’s embassy in Rome, Mr Robert Aguba, he disclosed that records at their disposal showed that those in Serbia had been paid up to August 2014 whilst their counterparts in Macedonia had been paid up to January 2015.
“What happens is that every year, the money delays. Even last year, those who completed had to stay on for several months. But, when the money came, we paid them. The plane tickets have delayed too because no funds have reached us yet,” he added.