How To Fund Free Education From Kindergarten To Tertiary Level?

For those of us who for decades have insisted that a poor developing nation with aspirations,  cannot afford not to give free education  from kindergarten to tertiary level to its citizens, it comes as a source of immense satisfaction   that finally Ghanaian politicians are falling over themselves,  to offer free secondary education to the younger generation of Ghanaians.


For families with young offspring, the  education of their wards is a matter of the utmost importance - which is why many parents make enormous sacrifices:  in order  to  give their children a good education.


Indeed, virtually every  ordinary  citizen in Ghana understands clearly, that education is the one sure  route to social mobility -  particularly for poor families that  aspire to join our country's comfortable middle classes.


Sadly, in an nation lumbered with a political class that seldom thinks creatively, it is not surprising that the one source of funding that could free up precious  resources -  currently wasted on a daft policy that is enriching only criminal syndicates, such as those  smuggling  fuel across our borders -  has escaped the politicians who are now resorting to Kweku-Anase-economics,  to prove that they can actually  fund free secondary education: if elected to power in the December presidential  and parliamentary polls.


The question is: Why do all our nation's political parties not simply reach a consensus-decision  that in order to fund free education in our homeland Ghana,  from kindergarten to tertiary level (for those with aptitude to study), they will agree to the removal  of every market-distorting subsidy, which is not benefiting targeted beneficiaries,  but is rather  enriching  wealthy criminal syndicates - and fund education through the resulting savings?


The sister nations that border our country,  pay far more for petroleum products than we do in Ghana, for example - but their national economies have still not yet collapsed. As far as we can tell.


So  what makes those who insist, for example,  on subsidising petroleum products  in Ghana,   think that somehow our national economy would collapse,   were we to  pay  realistic  prices  for  petroleum products?


Will it not rather lead to the efficient use of petroleum products by those who purchase  them - and lead to a switch to fuel-efficient vehicles eventually, I ask, dear reader?


Why does  a nation full of such intelligent Africans,  insist on indirectly subsidising the consumption of fuel by  some of those who live in the nations that border Ghana  -   by  continuing to allow our country to serve  as a source of cheap fuel for their national economies:  through the nation-wrecking activities of petrol  smugglers?


Surely, free-trade capitalist dynamos  like the Hong Kongs of this  world,  have not prospered by resorting to the economic equivalent of burying their heads in sand -  which continuing to maintain   poorly-targeted subsidies,  represent?


As a nation, we are reportedly   forking out as much as some Ghc60 millions every month, to subsidise the consumption of petroleum products. Is that not scandalous and  crazy, dear reader - and an expensive  folly that can only lead to the ruination of the enterprise Ghana?


If politicians want to know how to fund free education from kindergarten to tertiary level, let them confront the madness that  the maintenance of   ineffective  subsidies -   in a democratic nation that wants to have  an efficient  market economy in order to become a prosperous  society -   represents.  A word to the wise...


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Email: peakofi.thompson@gmail.com