Government spends GH¢917m on No-Fees-Stress policy for 321,807 students

Presenting an update on the No-Fees-Stress Policy, the Chief Executive Officer of the SLTF, Dr Saajida Shiraz, said the fund was a statutory agency under the Ministry of Education with a mandate to provide financial resources for the benefit of tertiary students and in the last one-and-a-half years, "we are contending with what we describe as an expanded mandate to the introduction of the government's flagship No-Fees-Stress Policy, which is a transformational initiative by President John Dramani Mahama to ensure that financial circumstance would not become a barrier to accessing tertiary education for any Ghanaian student".

The No-Fees-Stress Policy, she said, had five sub-components --- no academic fee policy, the free tertiary education for persons with disabilities, students loan plus initiative, enhanced traditional loan scheme with higher loan amounts and reduced interest rates, and digitalisation of the system to make it easier to access loans.

The government has so far spent GH¢917 million to support students under the No-Fees-Stress Policy, the Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, has revealed.