Accra, Feb. 11, GNA - Mrs Ama Benyiwa-Doe, Minister-Nominee for Central Region, on Wednesday said she would be a mother to all and ensure that children in the Region benefited from the many quality educational institutions in the Region. Mrs Benyiwa-Doe, who appeared before the Parliamentary Appointments

Committee, said: "It is unfortunate that due to poverty, people of the Central Region cannot afford to attend the schools in the Region, but under my administration we will implement a quota system that will ensure that people from the Region get a fair share of the quality education the Region offers," she said. When quizzed on her date of birth Mrs Benyiwa-Doe said her parents were illiterate so they could not tell the exact date on which she was born. When asked if she had considered the possibility of having been given the wrong date of birth, February 28, 1950, she said: "Honourable Chairman I wouldn't know that."

Mrs Benyiwa-Doe said she collected her End-of-Service Benefit under the Chinery-Hesse recommendations a month ago in answer to a question whether she had benefited from the Chinery-Hesse Report. She said she was supposed to have received her end-of-service benefit (ESB) in 2005 after serving in Parliament between 2001 and 2004. Asked about her characterisation of all members of New Patriotic Party (NPP) Government as cocaine dealers, she said it was wrong for her to have used the conviction of only a member to make such a generalisation.

Later in the day Alhaji Mahmood Khalid, Regional Minister-Nominee for the Upper West Region, said he would take advantage of the hard working nature of the youth and women in the Region to mobilise them for income-generating activities as part of an agenda to deal with poverty. He said he would liaise with the appropriate agencies to ensure that link roads between the Region and other regions were constructed in an expeditious manner.