Kumasi, Jan. 10, GNA - The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning has released a total of 2.153 trillion cedis to the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) Board for the past three-and-half years for the financing of the various projects and programmes of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports.

Seventy per cent of the amount has been expended on projects, which included the provision of lecture halls, classroom blocks, auditoriums, computer centres, administration blocks, workshops and buses. Mr Fosuaba A. Mensah-Banahene, Administrator of the GETFund Board, announced this at the presentation of a 58-seater Tata bus valued at 500 million cedis by the GETfund Board to the Kumasi Polytechnic in Kumasi on Monday.

He said 17 institutions have benefited from the GETFund and that all the universities and the polytechnics had sent a number of their academic staff overseas for further training under the GETFund sponsorship.

Mr Mensah-Banahene mentioned some of the projects completed by the GETFund as a five-storey library complex, a three-storey computer centres and stores as well as the building of the on-going hostel facilities and housing accommodation project at Adako-Jachie near Kumasi.

Mr Sampson Kwaku Boafo, acting Ashanti Regional Minister, who received the keys to the bus, said the government was committed to the development of education in the country, more especially the polytechnics.

He appealed to students of the country's polytechnics to avoid going on demonstrations and use dialogue to solve their problems. Dr Lord E. Asamoah, Principal of the Polytechnic, said arrangements were far advanced for the Kumasi Polytechnic to begin a degree programme.

He thanked the GETFund Board for the presentation and expressed the hope that it would greatly help the polytechnic to meet its transportation needs.

Dr Asamoah said the polytechnic spent two billion cedis last year to remove obsolete machines and workshops and replaced them with modern equipment to improve teaching and learning.