The Concerned Students with Special needs at the University of Ghana, want the Registrar of the Scholarship Secretariat removed from office with immediate effect.

The Concerned Students with Special needs of the University want government to expel the Registrar of the Scholarship Secretariat from office over what they describe as a “glaring display of colossal incompetence and dereliction of duty on his part as a registrar.” 

The group in a statement issued and co-signed by its leader, Gilbert Boateng Agyare and its President Mellish Kwame Agyapong, said if President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo fails to expel the Scholarship Secretariat Registrar from office, then he should be ready to “face the most mammoth demonstration in the history of the country against his government by special needs students across the country.”

The group noted that: “All students with special needs at the University of Ghana totaling about 200 have not received their bursary due to fundamental flippancy on the part of the registrar towards the issues of special needs students in the country.” 

Explaining their plight, the group explained that the bursary is an allowance given to persons living with disability who are in the tertiary institutions every year by the government to ameliorate the bad financial conditions of such people as a form of social assistance policy to reduce poverty and improve the standard of living.

However, the group revealed that: “We have not received our portion for three years so all our current students from the first year to the final year have never received a dime since they stepped foot on campus.

“Closely linked to the above challenge, is the issue of school fees being paid by the government through the scholarship secretariat for special needs students.”

Making reference to a year ago, they group asserted the “scholarship secretariat held a programme at the University of Education” which they attended, at which the secretariat indicated that “they were going to provide free tertiary Education for special needs students by paying our tuition in full.”

It stressed that since then nothing has been heard from the Scholarship Secretariat on the implementation of the policy. 

“We do not understand why we should be chasing the government to do what it has pledged to do,” the group stated. 

Also, all efforts to get the “anomaly rectified” has proven futile, the group further indicated. 

The group has given the government a two-week ultimatum, “to defray” the cost of their tuition as it promised to pay and also pay all the arrears in respect to the disability grant known as the bursary that it owes the students since 2019 till date else they will “hit the streets” in their numbers to “embark on a massive demonstration against the government”.