NPP’s initiative on education laudable Says ‘Dr Asemfoforo’

Mr Osei Yaw Nketia, a social commentator popularly called Dr Asemfoforo, has called on Ghanaians to support the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) initiative to provide free and compulsory education for students up to Senior High School irrespective of one's political affiliation.
He said the initiative was a good idea that would relieve parents in rural areas of a lot of burden.
In an interview, Dr Asemfoforo said he never believed that any government in his life time could provide free compulsory education to students up to that level but the NPP government had proved him wrong.
He urged the government to provide free notebooks and textbooks to students if the programme was to achieve its desired result because free compulsory education without notebooks and other incentives would not yield much result.
Dr Asemfoforo further commended the government for the School Feeding Programme and appealed to authorities entrusted with the programme to ensure its effective implementation.
He encouraged successive governments not to abandon the programme but embark on other innovations to make second-cycle education in Ghana more affordable for parents.
He expressed concern about the condition in which students in the rural areas studied, saying that “most schools in rural areas had to be closed down anytime there was a downpour and that, in most cases, affected the students during examination”.
Dr Asemfoforo said Free and Compulsory Education, the School Feeding Programme and the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) were President J. A. Kufuor’s hallmark and legacy to Ghanaians.
He, however, regretted that some hospitals in Kumasi, Sunyani and Koforidua were still taking money from pregnant women for their service and urged the authorities concerned to kindly adhere to the President's directive to provide free medical care pregnant women.
Another problem related to the NHIS, he stated, was with drugs prescribed for patients registered under the scheme.
He said most patients could not afford the drugs doctors prescribed for them and believed that undermined the essence of the programme, if hospitals could not provide drugs for patients registered under the programme.