President of the French Students Association at the University of Ghana (FRENSA-UG), Clement Owusu has expressed dissatisfaction with the Scholarship Secretariat’s failure to officially communicate the reasons for the delay in disbursing funds for the year abroad students.
In an interview on Campus Exclusive this morning, Clement Owusu spoke on the many efforts that were made to seek clarification from the secretariat on the causes of the fund disbursement delay.
“So as usual we kept moving to the scholarship secretary to hear something from them and up to now there’s still no any official feedback from them. There’s still no official communication concerning the year abroad, why the the funds are delayed, whether we will go or not.”
“My team and I, those in KNUST, GIL, UCC and others, they’ve made constant moves to the scholarship secretary through our department, all the way to our provost, even to the [Vice-Chancellor] of this university have made calls to the scholarship secretary. No official communication, no official response to this.”
He highlighted that students awaiting government funds for the year abroad program have become disheartened due to the prolonged wait.
“They’re giving up…they’re kind of devastated. They’re just down. So down hearted on the year abroad issue. The kind of enthusiasm they had to study the French and go for year abroad is going down. We have the passion for the language, so imagine we hear of an opportunity like year abroad, we are so happy to learn French and all of a sudden this is happening? We are going to lose interest in the French language.”
Clement Owusu has been appealing to other French bodies to join their voices in demanding the timely release of funds, as this would ensure the smooth operation of the year abroad program.
“I want to use this platform also to call on the French institutions and organizations. They’ve been so quiet about this issue. They should be involved. This is French language; even though we’re just some students, they should be involved in this [issue]. Because if the fight is only coming from UG-VC and the rest of the institutions are quiet, I mean, it doesn’t look like it’s really a worrying matter.”
Concurrently, the French Student Association had gone to the Scholarship secretariat’s office today for feedback over their petition. Information gathered from their encounter at the office contains that the students were redirected to return in January to further discuss their plight.
