Jirapa (UW/R), Aug. 19, GNA - The Jirapa/Lambussie District Assembly in the Upper West Region has disbursed a total of 206 million cedis to eighteen farmers' groups in the district under the Food and Agriculture Budgetary Support (FABS) to boost agricultural production. With the collaboration of Action Aid International (Ghana), 15 women's groups had been trained on the use of animal traction equipment to help them improve their farming activities. Mr Justin Dakorah, the District Chief Executive made this known at the last ordinary meeting of the fourth session of the Assembly at Jirapa.

On education, he said as a result of the capitation grant, which had swelled up enrolment figures in schools, extra school blocks were needed at Jirapa, Tizza, Hamile and the Lambussie East communities. To meet the growing educational needs in the district, the Assembly had made an annual budget allocation of 200 million cedis to that sector.

It was also supporting 117 students to undertake the Untrained Teachers' Diploma in Basic Education Programme to ensure that they were retained in the District after their courses. Mr George Hikah Benson, Upper West Regional Deputy Minister commended the Assembly for collecting over one billion cedis, as against an estimated amount of 569.8 million cedis as internally generated funds last year.

He advised contestants in the forthcoming district level elections to conduct their campaigns with decorum and refrain from allowing the election to turn into an NDC/NPP contest in order to protect the non-partisan nature of the assemblies. Mr Charles Gyang, Presiding Member of the Assembly said the major challenge facing the assembly, was the inability of its substructures to function and noted that the few personnel in the Area Councils were not committed, lacked logistics and the ability to articulate the needs of the people. This, he said had resulted in a gap between the people on one hand and the Assembly on the other. 19 Aug. 06