● Government must do well to remit the students

Permit me to comment on the delay in payment of stipends and bursaries to Ghanaian students studying on government scholarship abroad. The complaints keep coming back and it is now more or less an annual ritual.

The latest is that of Ghana­ian medical students in Cuba who are lamenting over the non-payment of their stipends for the past seven months.

The students, according to reports, are living on the benevolence of colleagues and friends as assurances from the Scholarship Secretariat have yielded no results.

I have been wondering why successive governments some­what do not seem to prioritise the needs of students studying abroad.

Studying abroad comes with its own challenges and it can get worse when students run out of cash. We all admit the unfavourable economic con­ditions in the country but it is not ideal for the government to delay payments for up to seven months.

The Ghana-Cuba students are just one group and I believe trainees elsewhere may be suffering similar fate. If it is, indeed, the case that the these statutory payments cannot be made on time, those in charge should communicate or make the necessary arrangements with the authorities abroad so the students are given some lifeline or breathing space.

I am, by this letter, adding my voice to that of the affect­ed students in Cuba and asking the government of Ghana to act with dispatch.

Frank Bruce,

Achimota-Accra.