Government secures $30m loan for internet connectivity

Cape Coast (C/R), Feb. 11, GNA - The Government has secured a 30-million- dollar loan to speed up efforts at making every district part of the digitized world, President John Agyekum Kufuor has announced.

This, he said, was to help provide the Ghanaian student the opportunity to carve a niche in Information Communications Technology (ICT) that is competitive to the global market.

It was on the basis of this that, the Government was ensuring that all second cycle schools had adequate telecommunication services to support the ICT infrastructure.

President Kufuor was addressing the 170th anniversary speech and prize-giving day of Wesley Girls High School, one of the leading girl's second cycle schools in the country, at Cape Coast. "Raising informed, disciplined women of integrity: Our hope for prosperity, progress and peace", was the theme for the anniversary. President Kufuor said knowledge had always been an important resource for the advancement of the individual and nation-building, noting that in today's scientific and technological world, it had become the most critical resource.

He said the government's education reform programme, scheduled for implementation in September this year, was carefully designed to respond to such demands so that students would be ready for life in the "global village."

Additionally, the reforms would place emphasis on technical and vocational training, which was a major tool of driving the economy, he held.

President Kufuor asked the youth to develop the required mind-set for entrepreneurship in order to lead the private sector and expressed the belief that they could be successful if society, as well as parents, nurtured them to be aware of such potentials.

"Otherwise, programmes that are laid on in the second and third cycle institutions towards this end, will have very little appeal for them."

President Kufuor called on the school to lead the crusade for the development of a new paradigm of making the youth interested in the private sector.

He pledged that government will donate a bus and also help to develop a modern sports field for the school.

Mrs Betty Dzokoto, the Headmistress, said discipline, dedication and hard work, by the tutors and students, had been the bedrock of the school's success story.

"The right kind of attitude is what would take our country forward. Here we have a good number of teachers who believe in the Christian legacy of sacrifice and are prepared to give off their best."

The Most Reverend Dr Robert Aboagye-Mensah, Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church, commended the Government for remaining a partner in the running of the mission schools instead of absorbing them. Wesley Girls High School is one of 23 senior secondary schools established by the Methodist Church in Ghana. 11 Feb. 2007