Wa, Jan. 12, GNA - A total of 76,954 adults including 36,118 women enrolled in the functional literacy programme in the Upper West Region under the second phase of the programme last year are expected to pass out in August this year.

About six thousand adult learners passed out during the first phase, Mr Abdullah Bin Salih, Regional Director of the Non-Formal Education Division of the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports said in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at Wa on Friday. He said 38 English Language facilitators had been trained and would be responsible for teaching 3,340 adult learners registered for the newly introduced English Language classes.

Mr Bin Salih commended the learners for the enthusiasm with which they were responding to their lessons and noted that the retention rate was very high in all the classes.

He said it was only in the dry season when there was not much work to do to earn their living that some few young men abandoned the classes to migrate to the South of the country to look for jobs.

During the year, Mr Bin Salih said the Region received 2,230 bicycles, 2,676 packets of roofing sheets, 960 sewing machines and 200 ghetto blasters for distribution to the facilitators.

To enable the learners to empower themselves economically, an amount of 200 million cedis was disbursed as loans to 31 groups of learners selected from all districts in the Region to finance their income generating activities.

The activities financed included, farming, grain banking, shea butter extraction, groundnut extraction and pito brewing. According to him, the recovery of the loans had been excellent, as some of the groups had already finished paying their credit including ten per cent interest.