Koforidua, Dec. 7, GNA - The Senior Minister, Mr John Henry Mensah, has cautioned that without a disciplined youth, Ghana's desire to become a middle-income country would be a mirage.

He has, therefore, urged students to be hardworking and well organized to enable them to contribute to national development meaningfully, to justify the huge investments made in their education.

Mr Mensah was speaking at the 60th anniversary Speech and Prize-Giving Day of the Ghana Secondary School (GHANASS), under the theme: "Discipline, the key to academic excellence and national development", at Effiduase-Koforidua on Saturday.

He said educational institutions could not develop without the contribution of local communities and commended the people of Effiduase, the Parent-Teacher Association of GHANASS and the New Juaben Municipal Assembly for providing the school with a four unit block of classrooms, school clinic, a generator and a mechanised borehole among others.

The Senior Minister said the government was determined to create equal opportunities to enable the youth in the country attain good quality education.

He said to keep faith with its promise to upgrade at least one Senior Secondary School (SSS) in each district, the government had signed contract for work to begin on the first batch of 31 SSS while funds were being sourced from the African Development Bank for work on another 21 schools to start.

Mr Mensah assured GHANASS that it would get its fair share of GETFund for projects.

He commended the school for its academic achievements, citing that one of its students, Mr Thomas Kyei Boateng, was adjudged as the best national student in the 2001 Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination, a feat he noted that many top schools have not been able to achieve.

The deputy Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Gustav Narh-Dometey, announced that the government had so far spent 900 billion cedis on educational infrastructure in the New Juaben Municipality including the construction of blocks of classrooms, libraries, teachers quarters and warehouses over the past three years.

He said 16.7 billion cedis was to be spent to upgrade the Oyoko Methodist Secondary School into a model school and a contract had been signed for work to start.

The Minister of Employment and Manpower Development and Member of Parliament for Koforidua, Mr Yaw Barima, counselled the students to imbibe the values of decency, discipline and respect for others rights when making demands and in expressing opposing views to policies and regulations.

The Omanhene of the New Juaben Traditional Area, Daasebre Professor Emeritus Oti Boateng, asked the students to guard against immoral livestyles that could make them to contract HIV/AIDS.

The Headmistress of GHANASS, Ms Rosemond Bampo, announced that the school attained 98 per cent in this year's Senior Secondary Certificate Examination of which 519 candidates out of 523 passed.

She said the school was pursuing a vigorous computerisation programme to facilitate administrative and academic work while negotiation was ongoing with the University of Education, Winneba, for the school to be used as a centre for the Distance Education Programme in the Eastern Region.

She said the School lacked inadequate facilities to meet the ever-increasing enrolment and appealed to individuals, organisations and government to renovate the girls' dormitory, provide a new bus to replace the 30-year-old one and fence the school to check encroachment.

Prizes including books, television sets, fridges and cash were given to outstanding students and long-serving teaching and non-teaching staff.

Mr Kyei Boateng, now a student of the School of Administration, University of Ghana, Legon, was presented with a wall-clock by the school while Mr Michael Agyekum Addo, National President of the GHANASS Old Students Association made a personal donation of one million cedis to him.

The Director General of the Ghana Education Service, the Reverend Ama Afo Blay, stressed the need for students to maintain discipline and study hard to attain higher educational levels.