FUND FOR NEEDY STUDENTS IN ASUTIFI (PAGE 11)

THE Asutifi District Assembly in the Brong Ahafo Region is to establish an educational endowment fund by the close of the year to cater for needy students in the district to enable them to pursue further education.
The fund, to be known as the Asutifi Educational Endowment Fund, will be managed by a board of directors with two representatives from among the management and members of the assembly.
The Asutifi District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr Eric Addae, said this at its first ordinary meeting at Kenyasi, the district capital.
He said the assembly would provide the seed money to set up the fund, while contractors working in the district would also be required to pay 0.5 per cent of their contract sum into the fund.
Besides, development partners such as Nananom, Newmont Gold Ghana Limited (NGGL), operators of the Ahafo Mine at Kenyasi, organisations and philanthropists would also be made to contribute to the fund.
Mr Addae noted that the establishment of the fund had been necessitated by the numerous appeals to the assembly for support from students in the district to enable them to further their education.
“Since my assumption of duty, my office has been flooded with personal appeals and formal applications for support of some kind from students to pursue further education and, having critically examined the situation, there is the need to set up the fund,” he stressed.
He said currently there were three schools in the district benefiting from the School Feeding Programme, namely, Muoho Anglican, Nkrankrom Methodist and Manhyia Primary, adding that the assembly was working assiduously for the expansion of the programme to enable more schools to benefit from it.
He announced that the assembly had, as of the end of June 2009, generated GH¢224,376.23 internally from property rates, fees, fines, among others, noting that plans were afoot to rake in more revenue locally to help the assembly to meet its development agenda.
The Brong Ahafo Regional Minister, Mr Kwadwo Nyamekye-Marfo, in his address, commended the assembly for taking the decision to establish an educational fund to support students from the district to pursue higher education.
He noted that 10,751 teachers out of the total of 21,554 from kindergarten up to the teacher training college level in the region were untrained.
He, therefore, tasked the various municipal and district assemblies in the region to sponsor more students to teacher training colleges to take up teaching appointments at the basic level of education across the region to help reverse the trend and also help get more students from the region to tertiary institutions.
He added that the assemblies that would sponsor students from their various areas of jurisdiction to the training colleges should bond the beneficiaries so that they would come back to serve in their communities after completion.