Sekyere West Assembly awards scholarships to 669 pupils

Mampong (Ash), Sept. 19, GNA - Government has given approval for 669 physically challenged and brilliant but needy pupils in primary and junior secondary schools in the Sekyere West District of Ashanti to be granted scholarships.

The 184 boys and 265 girls would benefit at the primary level while 88 boys and 132 girls will benefit from the package at the JSS level.

Mr Thomas Edward Atakorah, the District Chief Executive, who made this known at the first ordinary meeting of the Assembly at Mampong on Wednesday, said the scheme would be administered in collaboration with the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund).

The beneficiaries at the primary level will receive 84,000 cedis per annum per pupil and the JSS students will receive 110,000 cedis per student per annum.

The DCE said the District Education Directorate had in consultation with the stakeholders submitted the list of beneficiaries to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports for further action. The scheme, Mr Atakorah said was to make formal education affordable and accessible to these categories of children so that they were not denied their right to education.

He said plans to establish a cassava processing industry at Mampong to be known as Sekyere West Agro Processing Company were at an advanced stage.

Mr Atakorah said 450 cassava farmers had already registered with the Sekyere West Agro Business Union (SWABU) and that the Union was in the process of registering the company with the Registrar-General's Department.

He said the district was, however, required to raise between 500 million cedis and one billion cedis as its equity for participation in the industry and therefore urged the assembly members to educate their people to buy shares in the company to enable it to take off.

The DCE announced that about 3,500 people in the district had paid their premium for the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and that the taking of photograph for identification had started.

The DCE said the assembly received 4.1 billion cedis as its share of the common fund out of which it had provided a number of projects in the health, education and water sectors.

On environment, he said the assembly had embarked on a mass tree planting exercise to support plant and animal life.