Juaso (Ash), Dec 24, GNA - Dr Lord Justice Gyamfi-Fenteng, Asante-Akim South District Chief Executive (DCE), has advised facilitators of the Non-Formal Education Division (NFED) of the Ministry of Education to eschew partisan politics in the discharge of their duties. He noted that partisan politics would only aggravate the situation where people shunned the programme for political reasons, adding that, a lot of sacrifice had gone into nation building and called the facilitators to use their positions to sustain the programme.

Dr Gyamfi-Fenteng was speaking at a ceremony to honour 76 facilitators who had completed a 21-month training in the District at Juaso, on Friday. They received bicycles, sewing machines and radio-cassette players. The DCE stated that the District Assemblies had been designed to promote participatory democracy at the grass-root level, however, not based on partisan lines. He urged the facilitators to be development-oriented and to see themselves as facilitators of change and participatory democracy and challenged them to assume leadership roles in their communities for the effective dissemination of the Assembly's policies and programmes.

Dr Gyamfi-Fenteng called on them to encourage their learners to engage in income-generating activities and to form co-operatives to enable them to have access to loans from the Assembly. The DCE said about 200 million cedis given as loans since 1998 were still outstanding and stated that the Assembly was streamlining its procedures, adding that, well organised and identified groups such as the functional literacy classes would be considered. Mr Kwame Adomako, District Co-ordinator of the NFED, said the District exceeded its quota of 60 with 63 new classes being opened this year. He said 30 new English classes would be opened in addition to the existing 11 and urged the facilitators to work tirelessly to enlighten the people on the programme. Mr Adomako commended the facilitators for their dedication and asked them to incorporate English in their lessons.