Gomoa Potsin, May 2, GNA - The Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETfund) has set aside 1.1 trillion cedis to improve facilities at lass endowed schools throughout the country this year, Mr Fosuaba Banahene, Administrator of the Fund has announced.

He said that the Fund did not exhaust its budget allocation approved by the Board of Directors last year due to the disappointment of contractors who failed to execute contracts awarded to them. Mr Banahene said this at a two-day conference of heads and managers of the Ahmadiyya Educational Unit at Gomoa Potsin on Saturday. The theme of the conference was: "Promoting and sustaining education in Ghana, the role of the Ahmadi Head".

Mr Banahene announced that the Fund spent 2.992 billion cedis on Ahmadiyya Mission Schools from 2001 to 2003 to improve infrastructures and to enhance education.

He assured heads and managers of the Ahmadiyya Education Unit that the Fund would take good care of educational activities of the Mission to accelerate training and human resource development.

Mr. Michael Nsowah, Acting Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), expressed regret about the alarming rate of the encroachment on school lands throughout the country.

He said this posed a threat to future expansion of such schools, adding that schools in Accra, Kumasi and other cities would have a bleak future if precautionary measures were not taken to reverse the trend. He suggested that land demarcated for school should be properly documented to avoid litigation between landowners and school authorities.

The GES Director-General pointed out that the government would continue to pay salaries of teachers of mission schools while the management would be the responsibility of the missions. He stated that the government's White paper on the Educational Reform Review Committee had recommended the decentralization of schools' managements to help promote education.

Mr. Nsowah said under the new education reform policy, recruitment of teachers, management and disbursement of funds would be done at the district levels.

Mr. J. D Dimbie, General Manager of the Ahmadiyya Educational Unit asked the heads of the institutions to submit regular data on their schools to the GES to enable it to have more information about their schools.

He said the Mission had 266 primary, Junior and Senior schools throughout the country and appealed to the government to assist in ensuring effective teaching and learning in the schools.