The West African Examinations Council has stated that the government only paid 15% of the arrears it owes the regulatory body.
The revelations come on the back off the concerns earlier raised by the Minority in Parliament that examinations body still owes invigilators, examiners and supervisors for work done in 2022.
Speaking in a media interaction with the Parliamentary Press Corps, the Ranking Member on the Education Committee , Honourable Peter N0rtsu-Kotoe advised government to offset its debt owed WAEC as soon as possible.
According to him, the country stands at risk of losing the Headquarters status of WAEC due to the huge amounts of cash owed the sub regional examinations body.
In a related development , the Public Relations Officer of WAEC, John Kapi revealed that the government has advanced a payment of Ghc10m to WAEC, which accounts for 15% of total debt owed for services rendered.
” For the 2021 BECE and 2022 BECE, we have received the arrears but for the current year, the government has advanced a sum of Ghc10m to us which accounts for 15% of total payments due us.
Certainly, there is still an outstanding balance we needs to be settled in coming months as the government has indicated to us its commitment to finish of the payments in due course and we are waiting on that as well”.
He added that if the government does not come good on its promises to settle the outstanding bill , the conduct of this year’s exam may suffer hiccups.
” Thus far, we have been able to do the printing for the exams we are conducting , but for the marking of scripts and processes of final results to go on unabated, we will need more cash to settle such commitments”. he added.
Furthermore , over 600,000 students across the country are sitting for this year’s exams which commences on Monday, August 7,2023.
There are 300,391 females and 300,323 males sitting for the exams this year from 18,993 schools across Ghana.
