Condo Recondition Group Incorporated, a US based peace advocacy group with branch in Liberia has advanced several recommendations to the Government of Liberia.
CONDO’s recommendations through the Ministry of Education (MoE) is primarily aimed at introducing new policies that will ease the rising financial burdens for education on parents in the country.
Condo said while it sincerely acknowledges the numerous challenges the government faces, it is about time that the government directs its focus towards finding more policy solutions that will alleviate or somehow contain the overall costs for education at least within semi affordable range for the poor parents.
“There is no doubt that there is a mountain of challenges on the way to make public schools adequately competitive and accessible to every Liberian child as a matter of human right, however, we equally believe that there is nothing stopping the government from formulating and enforcing policies to control the excessive but unnecessary costs on parents in the name of fees and requirements which are in some cases far higher than the actual tuition,” the Executive Director of Condo, Kabah M. Trawally asserted.
“Everything that constitutes tuition is now being fragmented into various sets of fees and more. Parents are obliged to pay unjustifiable fees such as breakage, handbook, uniform, outfit for PE, library and even courses like computer studies – mostly undelivered – on the yearly basis.,” he expressed.
According to Trawally, Condo believes that there need not be a rocket scientist to know that these fees are very exploitative and their continuous increase at the back of difficult economic hardship poses serious threat to social harmony and national reconciliation.
In a press release issued in Monrovia, the US based peace advocacy group, in its advanced recommendations, wants a single, and affordable format of Physical Education (PE) outfit for all schools to be accessible on the general market and one not produced by the schools.
The group further proposed that all insurances against breakage must be abolished and replaced with one-off deposit fee for a new chair or repair that is renewable only when the depositor (student) broke his/her chair
Other recommendations of the group include the abolition of the compulsory, yearly purchases of school handbook by every student and replace it by one handbook per parent or new student unless it has been updated.
The group also suggests that the Ministry abolishes all extra fees for computer, laboratory and Library noting that these are not extra services aside from tuitions paid because some schools are in constant habit of collecting these fees without delivering.
Condo called on the government to withdraw the certificate from any school found condoning the practice of teachers’ appreciation fees and create schools’ monitoring taskforce to ensure full compliance of the new policies.
Meanwhile, Condo believes that these recommendations reflect a genuine Pro-Poor approach that will save parents millions of dollars and keep more children in school and hopes that the government gives them due consideration in a bid to ease the rising financial burdens of education on parents in the country.