Students of the various agricultural colleges in the country will on Wednesday, October 11 picket at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) to demand their inclusion on the list of colleges that will benefit from the restoration of trainee allowances as promised by government.
Students Representative Council (SRC) president for Kwadaso Agric College Stanley Mensah, in a radio interview, said they will boycott lectures and collaborate with colleagues from the other colleges to march to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) which has oversight responsibility for the school.
“We began boycotting lectures last Wednesday, and we are going to continue. If God permits, next week Wednesday [October 11], we are going to stage a mammoth picketing at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Accra,†he said.
Government, as ways to fulfil its campaign promise of restoring trainee allowances, has announced the restoration of nursing and teacher trainee allowances which will be disbursed by the Student Trust Loan Fund, however, students from the Agric colleges are furious over what they said was their exclusion from the list of beneficiaries.
According to Stanley Mensah, they have petitioned MoFA to have the issue addressed but their efforts have proven futile.
“We have gone to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to meet the Minister himself, but he told us that our allowance was not captured in this year's budget,†Mr Mensah bemoaned.
Mr Mensah added the protests will not end until government signs a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to make students from Agric colleges beneficiaries of the allowances.