Chief launches Education Endowment Fund

Anum-Asikuma (E/R), Nov. 10, GNA - Ms Patience Addow, former Eastern Regional Minister on Sunday asserted that illiteracy and poverty have constituted the major roadblocks to worthwhile political choices and good leadership in the country.

Ms Addow was speaking in an interview with Newsmen at the launch of an Education Endowment Fund initiated by Baffour Abuko Kofi II, Chief of Anum-Asikuma in the Eastern region.

She said experience had shown that people's political preferences were influenced more by how much political office seekers were able to dole out to them and what they expected to gain individually from such political office seekers while in office rather than on an objective assessment of the leadership capabilities of such people to work for the common good.

Ms Addow said it was important that efforts were made to achieve a high level of literacy and economic empowerment among the populace so that their political decisions and choices could be based on informed judgements rather than on emotions, sentimentalism and expectations of personal gain.

"Indeed, poverty, illiteracy and ignorance are holding back every effort at development in all spheres of life and the nurturing of a viable democratic culture and citizenry", she observed.

Speaking at the fundraising durbar, which coincided with his 10th anniversary as Chief of Anum-Asikuma, Baffour Abuko Kofi bemoaned the fact that many parents in the town found it difficult to pay 2,000 cedis to get their children to go to school.

He said because of the inability of several parents to settle their children's school fees, the Head-teacher's salary had to be withheld. Baffour Abuko Kofi, who together with his wife has been paying the school fees for 24 pupils and providing school uniforms for 30 others, said mobilisation of funds to boost education in the town had become imperative.

He said the target of the fund is to mobilise about 120 million cedis by December adding, that the part of it would be used to address several problems confronting teachers and pupils in the community. In a sermon, the Reverend Moses Opoku-Agyeman, District Minister of Anum Presbyterian Church, said the initiatives by Chiefs and people to mobilise funds to improve education in their localities constituted the fulfilment of a Christian obligation on leaders to work towards enriching the lives of their subjects.

He said education was the source of enlightenment and hope for people living in misery, ignorance and deprivation and "those who help others to drink from its fountain required the support of all." Quoting an American Philosopher, William James, Rev. Opoku-Agyeman said: "The value of life is computed not in its duration but in its donation."

Meanwhile, Nana Oforiwa Amanfo I, Apegyahemaa of Akropong-Akwapim has volunteered to sponsor 10 brilliant but needy pupils from Amum-Asikuma from Junior Secondary School to Senior Secondary School level.