Only ‘Kingdom Books’ has the right to reproduce old questions from WAEC

Deputy Education Minister and Assin South MP John Ntim Fordjour justified awarding a sole-source contract to Kingdom Books and Stationery to deliver the old questions from the Education Council of the West Africa (WAEC) to high school applicants.

The government spent around 34 million Ghanaian cedis in 2020 for this purpose, which has reportedly been behind an ‘extraordinary’ performance in recent years.

Speaking to Berla Mundi on TV3 New Day, the deputy minister said the government was forced by certain circumstances to outsource the contract to a single supplier.

“WAEC owns the copyright in all of their questions, documents and reviewers’ reports, if there is a publisher who, without WAEC’s legal permission, reproduces any WAEC material that the publisher does in violation of the law. And that needs to be put in context, the only company that WAEC has given this legal authority to reproduce their past questions and the Examiner’s Report is Kingdom Books. As other publishers are able to obtain the legal right to reproduce the WAEC material, a call for tenders should be issued. But as we speak, the only company that has the exclusive right to reproduce is Kingdom Books, ”he explained. Builsa South MP Clement Apaak, who was also a part of the show, requested documents to support the Minister’s claim that Kingdom Books and Stationery has the exclusive right to produce WASSCE’s earlier issues.