Akrofu-Xeviwofe (V/R), April 13, GNA-Mr Mawutor Goh, Ho Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), on Wednesday lauded the deepening rapport between the 66th Artillery Regiment of the Ghana Army in Ho and the civil society.

He said such relationships would assist in removing the negative perceptions civilians had about the military.

Mr Goh was addressing soldiers from the Regiment at Akrofu, before they joined the people there to work on a block of three-unit classroom with a library and a computer laboratory for the E.P Primary. He said: "Not many people know that soldiers engage in the construction of bridges, undertake engineering works apart from their role of defending the territorial integrity of the nation".

The participation of the soldiers in community projects formed part of a programme to commemorate the 39th anniversary of the Regiment. Mr Goh expressed joy that the "days when the appearance of soldiers on the streets or in any community made people jittery, were gone forever".

The soldiers, shouted the slogan "where there is artillery, there is glory," and later formed groups to undertake carpentry and masonry works on the 220 million-school project, which, is being funded by Ghana Outlook, a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) with support from its foreign partners.

Major Dieu-Donne Gbedawo, Second In Command at the Regiment, said "civil society must consider soldiers as civilians in uniform" and also expressed gratitude at the growing bonds between the regiment and the communities.

Mr Charles Coffie Agbelie, General Secretary of the Akrofu-Xeviwofe Development Association (AXEDA), said the initiation of the project was in fulfilment of the association's 2003 Easter resolution to undertake and complete one development project every year.

Mr Agbelie said under the AXEDA 10-year Development Plan, a library, computer laboratory and a resource centre was being built for the community Junior Secondary School.

He said the people had planned to produce various categories of professionals within the next 10 years under a scholarship scheme being operated by AXEDA.