Regional News of Thursday, 7 June 2012

Source: GNA

Minister orders replacement of honey-comb school buildings

The Minister of Education, Mr. Lee Ocran, has called for the removal of honey-comb windows on school buildings to be replaced with wooden or glass ones to ensure clear visibility in the classrooms.

Mr. Ocran who made the call at Gomoa Simbrofo near Apam during his official visit to the Gomoa West on Wednesday, asked the rural communities not to encourage construction of school buildings with honey-combs.

The day’s maiden working visit took him to Gomoa Simbrofo District Assembly Primary and Junior High Schools, Gomoa Senior High/Technical School at Dawurampong, and Mozano Community Senior High School at Mozano near Gomoa Eshiem.

The Minister inspected on-going projects in the schools and interacted with the staff and students to know their concerns.

Mr. Theophilus Aidoo-Mensah, the District Chief Executive said 58 projects on education have been allocated in the District out of which 35 have been completed.

The projects included classrooms infrastructure, teachers’ quarters and ICT centres.

Mr. Ocran commended the Assembly for doing a good job.

He said government had decided to provide accommodation for teachers alongside construction of school buildings.

At Simbrofo, Mr. Ocran donated GH¢1,000.00 for the purchase of items for the local Kindergarten school.

At Dawurampong Senior High/Technical School, the Minister hinted that Government is sourcing a loan from China to rehabilitate and equip all vocational and technical schools in the country, to make them produce the needed manpower for the informal sector.

He said as part of the Better Ghana Agenda, government is determined to improve the literacy rate to make the people understand government policies and programmes better.

At Mozano Community Secondary School, Mr. Ocran announced that government would provide teachers of basic schools with lap top computers to enhance their work.

He said 15,000 out of the 60,000 computers acquired by the government had been distributed to the beneficiary school

The Minister announced that plans are on-going for computers to be produced locally to make their prices affordable.**