Koforidua, Aug 8, GNA - The Eastern Region has been allocated about 18.4 billion cedis as Capitation Grant for the 2005/2006 academic year, the Regional Minster, Mr Yaw Barimah, said on Tuesday. Speaking at the "Regional Meet the Press" at Koforidua he said the initiative called for more resources such as additional infrastructure and manpower to meet the increased enrolment engendered by the implementation of the policy.

On the NEPAD School Feeding programme, he said all the districts in the region were preparing to implement the programme after it began in the Birim North District earlier this year.

He said as a result of increase in school infrastructure, basic school enrolment in the region had also increased from 615,852 in 2004 to 682,454 in 2005, while the Computerised System of Placement into secondary schools last academic year rose from 15,634 in 2004 to 24,777 in 2005.

On agriculture, Mr Barimah said the Ministry of Food and Agriculture had facilitated the formation of 100 farmers groups and about 750 million cedis disbursed to them with 237,8 million cedis going to 38 maize seed growers last farming season.

Under the Food and Agriculture Budgetary Support (FABS) the Regional Minister said each district would access 206 million cedis to support farmers for the expansion of poultry, pigery, oil extraction, vegetable production, gari processing and snail rearing.

On the National Health Insurance Scheme implementation in the region, Mr Barimah said all the 17 districts were implementing the scheme with 454,650 people, representing 22 per cent of the population of 2,106,696 registered and 10,176,155,619 cedis collected.