GTP inaugurates canteen for Tema Community 4 Primary School

Tex Styles Ghana Limited (GTP) has handed over the 200-seater canteen to authorities of the Tema Community 4 Number Two Primary School as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations.

The company in 2016 promised to construct a modern canteen for the Tema Community 4 Number Two Primary School.

The 200-seater capacity canteen, which costs GH¢200,000, was funded from the personal contributions of employees of the company with support from the establishment.

The project was initiated during the tenure of the immediate past Managing Director of the company, Kofi Boateng, and was completed under the current MD, Erik Van Der Staaij, who inaugurated and handed over the facility to the school’s authorities at a colourful ceremony in Tema on Wednesday.

The canteen is fitted with chairs, tables, and kitchen, hygiene and safety facilities.

Mr Van Der Staaij, speaking at the ceremony, said the company did not only provide the funds, but more importantly, our skilled craftsmen, designers, masons, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and painters designed and built this block and the furniture inside.”

“This school is more or less our school. We have been neighbours for so long. So when the idea came up that we should select one public school to support, we could not have passed this school by and go to other schools. It was just natural that we help our neighbour first. We were eager to execute this canteen project because we felt it was a project that will impact directly on the health and wellbeing of school children,” he said.

Mr Staaij said the schoolchildren had no proper eating place, compelling them to eat in the open.

According to him, while some children sat on the staircase and stones, others sat on the bare floor to eat their food.

“This was a cause of worry for us. The health of our children was at stake here. So we decided to build them this canteen.”

The canteen is fitted with sinks with running water and soap for the children to wash their hands.

Mr Staaij said the company had also printed some habit-forming messages on the inside walls of the canteen to educate the children on good hygienic practices.

In the past three years, he said the company had undertaken a number of projects, including the renovation and refurbishment of the Lye-In Ward of Tema General Hospital, supported Breast Care International to educate Ghanaians on the prevention of Breast Cancer, trained about 30 Ghanaians in tailoring and fashion designing and donated some 200 pints of blood to the National Blood Bank in April 2016.

“All these we have done just to show to Ghanaians that we care.”