The West African Examination Council (WAEC) has revealed that it will use drones to dispatch question papers for this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) to hard-to-reach areas across the country.
The 2024 BECE starts on Monday, July 8, and ends on July 12. A total of 569,095 candidates, comprising 282,648 males and 286,447 females from 19,506 schools, have registered for the examination.
In an interview on TV3 late news monitored by Kasapafmonline.com on Friday night, the Director of Public Affairs at WAEC, John Kapi, said the Council has contracted ZIPLINE to fly the examination papers to Sekyere Afram Plains in the Ashanti Region, where the roads have been cut off due to the onset of the rains.
“As a Council, we’ve looked at some of these areas that are difficult to access. What we’ve done, for example, with Sekyere Afram Plains, who usually would have picked up their question papers from Mampong Ashanti, is that we are told that with the onset of the rains, the roads again have been cut off. So we are resorting to the use of drones operated by ZIPLINE. It takes about 40 minutes from the time of the launch of the drone to the time it will land at Anyonofie. We have about 48 candidates there, so arrangements have been made for ZIPLINE to send the questions to them by drone. Besides that, in every part of this country, we’ve gone ahead to open what we call examination depots for the storage of the confidential material (question papers) to enable the people to access the depots readily and also get back to the venues to start the examination on time,” he explained.
The Director of Public Affairs was, however, unable to state how much WAEC will spend on the drone service.
“Usually, they will submit an invoice after the exercise. As we speak, they are just about starting. We are not sure how many times we are going to go by drone, so we are waiting to complete the exercise and submit an invoice for payment,” Kapi noted.
When asked why WAEC, which does not have money and is owed so much by the government, would contract a service without knowing its cost, Mr. Kapi expressed confidence that WAEC would be able to pay.
“Last year we contracted them and we were able to pay. The assumption is whatever it is, even if there is any percentage increase based on inflation, it is not going to be such that we are not able to afford. These are costs that are associated with examinations; you cannot run away from them. We ensure that no one is left out or deprived of writing the examination,” he stated.
Source: Kasapafmonline.com
