Nalerigu Youth Development centre needs equipment

Nalerigu (N/R), Oct. 20, GNA - The Nalerigu Youth Development Center, commissioned by President John Agyekum Kufuor last year for renovation works in the East Mamprusi district has admitted its first batch of 120 students to learn various skills, is without learning aids and other teaching equipment.

The two-storey building center, which had been renovated with about one billion cedis from the HIPC funds, is to train students in carpentry and joinery, dressmaking, masonry, electrical engineering, fashion and design, Agriculture engineering and secretarial courses. Students of the centre raised these concerns when the Northern Regional Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Saddique Boniface, paid a-day's working visit to the center on Wednesday.

The Minister embarked on a two-day tour of the East Mamprusi and the Bunkpurugu/Yunyoo districts to inspect development projects and to acquaint himself with the situation in the rural communities. The students complained of lack of text books, accommodation, agriculture implements, a vehicle, inadequate teaching staff and called on the government to help address the problems to realize the dreams and objects of establishing the centre.

The students said the centre was the only major skills training school in the whole of the Northern Region and that it was necessary to adopt useful measures to improve its facilities to motivate students to enroll for training.

Mrs. Mariam Ibrahim, a tutor of the Fashion and Design department told the Minister that lack of required equipment such as tables, scissors and dressing mirrors was making it difficult for students to undertake the practical aspects of the training.

The Minister assured the centre that he would communicate to the authorities involved in Accra to ensure that some of their immediate needs are addressed and advised them not to allow themselves to be used as agents of destruction.

He said the NPP government was committed in infrastructure development particularly improving educational, health and other facilities in the rural areas to solve the unemployment in the country. Alhaji Boniface, who described the NPP agenda as "Pay back time" said the people voted to return the party to power because of the campaign promises made by President Kufuor and that the time had now come to fulfil those promises.

The Minister earlier commissioned a Day Care center at Langbinsi, a farming community near Gambaga and inspected the progress of work of a-23-kilometer road network from Nagboo Jawani-Tuni under the DANIDA transport support programme at the cost of about 2.3 billion cedis, which is near completion.