Kumasi, June 28, GNA - The Edwenase Rehabilitation Centre in the Kumasi metropolis faces imminent permanent closure. This is due to the inability of the government to provide the needed financial support to fund the activities of the Centre, which was established to provide vocational and technical training to disabled persons in the Ashanti region.

The Centre, whose yearly budget allocations are attached to that of the Regional Director of the Department of Social Welfare, received only three million cedis last year to finance its activities. It is yet to receive any funding from the government for this year. Already, the Centre, which currently has less than 50 inmates, is indebted to the tune of two million cedis.

Mr Modesto Ayurode, Manager of the Centre, made these startling revelations when he received donations worth 10 million cedis from the Kumasi branch of the Stanbic Bank on Wednesday. The items included bags of rice and sugar, a quantity of soap and detergents, toilet rolls, loaves of bread, cartons of Milo and assorted clothes.

Mr Ayurode indicated that the Centre had the capacity in terms of facilities and staff to enroll and train more disabled persons but the dwindling financial support had become a hindrance. He said the Centre which is supposed to be funded wholly by the government, had been depending on the benevolence of some philanthropic organizations and individuals for survival.

What had compounded the problem, he said was the inability of some parents and guardians to provide the needed financial assistance to their wards.

Mr Ayurode said one of the viable ventures of the Centre was the Leather and Shoe works Department, which had a bright prospect of generating income to sustain itself, but lacks a factory, so it could not produce at a large scale.

He said the owner of a factory near the Centre had offered to sell it to the Centre at the cost of 10,000 dollars and appealed to individuals and organizations to assist it to buy the factory to produce shoes for sale to the public.

Mr Ayurode said the Centre had also got a large tract of land, which could be cultivated to feed the inmates and appealed for assistance in the areas of weedicides and other farm inputs.

He thanked the Stanbic Bank for its continuous support to the Centre and urged other corporate organizations to come to their aid to enable it train the less privileged in society to earn a decent living. Mr David Kwasi Kuma, Ashanti Regional Manager of the bank, said the donation was the third to the Centre and that the bank always thinks about the well being of the inmates.

He said the bank, which had branches in about 38 countries throughout the world spent a total of 55.5 billion cedis in 2005, on corporate social development initiatives and pledged the continued support of the bank to the Centre.