In consonance with the extreme hardship in the country vastly characterised by the soaring prices of goods and services, students of Kumasi Technical University (KsTU) students claim that they now eat only once each day and occasionally sleep on an empty stomach.
The Onua Maakye “People’s Assembly” was on its second day. In response to the current economic difficulty in Ghana, one of the students who went by the name Ofori Akoto Bismark stated on Thursday, September 29 that he only eats once each day with a “football configuration” of 0-1-0 or 1-0-0 and 1-0-0.
He explained that “my parents are cocoa farmers and little has been done to increase prices of cocoa so my parents give me same amount of money since last two years. Yet prices of food and transportation are very costly especially on campus so some of us we have to strategize ourselves and eat once daily because we can’t afford to eat more than one on campus”.
He further explained that state of Ghana’s economy has taken a pinch students’ livelihood on campus “and we the students are really at the mercy of the economic crunch as most of us are unable to afford a three square meal daily”.
“I don’t even eat any better meal when I wake up in a day. I only eat ‘gob3’ with enough gari once in a day either in the morning (1-0-0) or afternoon (0-1-0) till the next day because the cost of living in this country is throat cutting,” he cried out.
He added: “Even when the lecturer is in class, I am unable to concentrate because of hunger. I am always praying that he leaves early such that I can go and find something to eat because there is no way I can concentrate in class on an empty stomach.
“The situation if nothing is done about it will churn out illiterates because we can’t even focus and learn on empty stomachs.”
He pointed out that the rising cost of food is having a hard impact on them as students, therefore they need to eat wisely. He went on to say that due of the increases in transportation costs, students occasionally had to skip classes because they cannot afford to go.
“We are the future leaders of this nation but the current cost of living in the country is affecting our lives and education negatively and this may have a dire effect on the human resource development and productivity in the future,” he lamented.