Government on Tuesday announced measures aimed at improving the living conditions of Ghanaians, targeting areas of education, communication, infrastructure, energy and water.
Mr. Felix Ofosu Kwakye, Deputy Minister of Information and Media Relations, who made the announcement at a news conference, said despite challenges facing the economy, government was committed to delivering on its better Ghana agenda.
Economic and social reforms remained the priority and focus of President John Dramani Mahama’s spirit of transparency and accountable governance to enhance the lot of both rural and urban dwellers, he said.
According to him, about 32 million exercise books were distributed to over 4.8 million basic school children nationwide in 2013, while 10 million more will be given out in the course of 2014.
This year, he said, 462,961 final year Junior High Schools students will be subsidized at a cost of GHC14.8 million, representing 70 per cent of the bill while parents paid the remaining GH?15.00 which is 30 per cent of the examination fees.
He said: "the Ministry of Education in collaboration with WAEC has reviewed the policy on BECE re-sit and introduced a new system under which private candidates will now be permitted to re-sit beginning from February 2015.”
He said currently the government is fully funding the school feeding programme after the Dutch government withdrew its support, following what it considered as "impropriety" about the programme in 2008.
He further indicated that government had invested about $800 million dollars to meet 85 per cent urban water demand by 2015 and 76 per cent rural demand by the same year.
Mr Kwakye also announced that the health sector is receiving logistical and infrastructure attention across the country, while the National Health Insurance Authority paid GH?748 million in claims in 2013.
He said as part of the commitment to expand power generation capacity, government commissioned the 132Mega Watts T3 thermal plant at Aboadze, a 2Mega Watts Solar Plant at Navrongo and the 4OOMega Watts Bui Hydro Electric Project.
“Through these efforts we have added 534MW to our power generation capacity, upward from 2,311MW to 2,845MW.”
He said the current electricity supply challenges could have been worse but for those timely interventions.
Construction work is progressing steadily on the Ultra-modem Kwame Nkrumah Interchange, which will replace the famous Kwame Nkrumah Circle.
He said government recognized the challenges in the mobile telephony and broadband services fight against fiber cuts, application of proportionate sanctions to offending telecom service providers, asset sharing and introduction of an interconnect clearing house are pursued.
“Very soon the introduction of 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology into the telecom market are being implemented, to improve on quality of voice and data services,” he added.
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