The Minister for Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, is expected to present a bill to parliament to legally enforce the free Senior High School Policy for future governments.
The Free SHS bill is one of several laws to be discussed by parliament during the 3rd meeting, which starts today.
During a leadership engagement with the media, majority leader Alexander Kwamena Afenyo-Markin argued that providing legal support for the policy would make it a right for every eligible Ghanaian.
Other bills on the agenda include the EOCO bill, which aims to amend the existing EOCO Act, and the Affirmative Action Bill, among others.
Mr. Afenyo-Markin explained, “You cannot claim the right to those provisions. The fact that they are there does not mean that you can apply to the court to enforce those rights. They are aspirational. Now when it gets to a point that a government lifts it up to give life to it, there’s a need to enact a law to regulate it. And in doing so, it would have been given life. Then the lawyers will say ‘Now it has become justiciable’ in the sense that a court of law can rely on it to make certain orders, enforce certain rights, give rights, and take certain actions.”
He continued, “So I think that this free SHS Bill if we consider it as a House, means it becomes mandatory for the government to implement this until it is repealed. No government will have the right to say ‘I’m not going to enforce Free SHS’ because now there is a law.”
