General Assembly Speaker of the University of Ghana, Ramzy Ahmed Fuseini, has disclosed that there would be a 60% subsidy for the University on the tertiary Vodafone bundle by the company.
The Vodafone tertiary bundle is a package that gives 150 minutes to all networks and IDD to selected countries, 5GB of data, and 100 SMS to all networks, allowing students to make calls for free as well.
The General Assembly of the University of Ghana is making efforts to purchase this bundle to remedy network connectivity issues on campus while waiting for the extension of WIFI across the university’s campus.
In an interview with Univers News, Ramzy Ahmed Fuseini revealed that Vodafone has not yet disclosed the pricing for the bundle; however, the company will cover 60% of the cost to allow more students to benefit from this package.
“They are expecting that 5GB should be for a month for each student, but the pricing has not come out. It would, however, be 60% less than the amount you pay for ordinary credits. So if you are going to buy data packages of 10GB for ten cedis, 60% of it will be bought by Vodafone, so the price for the packages does not have a fixed price yet, but they have the data packages.”
He stated, however, that the deal has not been properly communicated to students, even though the General Assembly has been presented with it in recent meetings.
“My issue was with the communication to the students. This is something that the student body is going to partake in, so communication around it should be more powerful because most students do not even know about the deal in the first place that we are even considering accepting. There should not be a case where next year it will be in their fees and they will say they did not know about it.”
Ramzy Ahmed Fuseini also revealed that he has urged Vodafone Company to properly educate the student populace on the deal and its numerous benefits, as the Vice Chancellor is in favor of the deal but skeptical about students accepting it.
“I have had meetings with the Vodafone people themselves, where I said that they should try their best to make the education of the deal go beyond even the Assembly, as [they] are not going to come and lobby the Assembly alone but also the students. I believe if there is proper communication, that will not happen because there are things in the package that I am buying into. The Vice Chancellor [also] said she is okay with it, but the students have to accept it.”
He further encouraged students to partake in the last General Assembly meeting as their input would count in the final decisions to be made in the meeting on issues of students’ concerns.
“There are a lot of things that will go on the final day, and I hope the student body will all come in their numbers to witness the highest decision-making body. The General Assembly, which is the highest decision-making body, has more power than the Executive Branch. That is why the Executive, which includes the President, his Vice President, the General Secretary, and the Treasurer, are all part of the General Assembly. So I want students to come and witness the house and know that we are making decisions on your behalf, and then, surprisingly, in our constitution, even if you are just an ordinary member that is coming to observe, you can make inputs, you can stand up, and you can say no to this. So I hope that on the last day of the assembly, people will come.”
He also mentioned that there will be an audit board to check on the use of the dues by the UGSRC.
He added that students who attend the meetings as observers have the potential to join the audit board provided that they are well-versed in finance and economics.
“We also have an audit board. This audit board is a five-member board that is going to audit the amount of money we paid as SRC dues over the past four years. This audit board will check on the SRC to see what they are using their dues for. There will also be another appointee on the Audit Board who is not a member of the General Assembly, so even an observer who comes and has basic knowledge in finance and economics can be a member of the Audit Board. We further have the finance committee membership that we will add, as well as the Vodafone tertiary bundle that we will talk about, and finally, the appointment of the committees.”
Story by: Alexander Kuuku Osei-Baidoo | univers.ug.edu.gh
