BECE 2024: GH₵47m cannot pay of debts

The West African Examination Council, WAEC has said the GH₵47 million paid to it by the government is not enough to pay its debtors. WAEC said though the council will organize BECE 2024 as scheduled, the money is not sufficient to settle all its contractors.

The back and forth was brought by a claim by Nsawam Adoagyiri lawmaker, Annoh-Dompreh that the government paid GH₵80 million to WAEC. The Council debunked the claim, saying it only received GH₵47.125 million.

However, the council has assured that it will proceed with the BECE 2024 examination as scheduled. It added that the amount it received won’t be enough to settle the about GH₵90 million it owes its creditors.

“Currently, we have been able to print some answer booklets to the tune of about 12.6 million Cedis. We have been able to buy pencils to the tune of 1.146 million and we have also bought bond paper for printing that cost about 48 million Ghana Cedis.

“So if we talk about our scale of preference, then what we are saying is that we will not be able to pay our debtors. However, we will be able to conduct the examination as we are supposed to do,” Director of Public Affairs at WAEC, John Kapi said.

Before the disclosure, there were fears the Council may not be able to organize BECE 2024 due to lack of funding. John Kpabi raised public anxiety when he said the Council despite completing initial preparations may postpone the examination until the government makes funds available.

“On our part, as I have said to the media over the last few days, we have managed to get bond paper to print our question papers. So all preliminary preparations have been done. What we need is to get money from the government and then we send our officers out there and conduct the examination.

“In view of that, we are afraid we might have to postpone the exam because there is no money anywhere for us to use for the examination,” he told Joy News on June 21.

BECE 2024 is scheduled to run from Monday, July 8 to Monday, July 15, 2024. WAEC needs GH¢95.83 million to organize the examination.