Kpoi-Ete, July 21, GNA - For using three classrooms for over 10 years to accommodate eight classes, residents of Kpoi-Ete in the Kpone-Katamanso Constituency in the Tema Municipality sighed a sign of relief when the Tema Municipal Assembly (TMA) cut a sod for the construction of three classrooms.

The three classrooms, office and store project, which is expected to be completed within 100 days, is partly funded by the World Bank and the assembly at a cost of over 200 million cedis. The Head Master of Kpoi-Ete Basic School, Togbui Hatsu Agbenyo, said pupils of the school that was established in 1982 used to study under trees until a three-class room block was constructed in 1997. The school, which has a population of 115 pupils due to the school feeding programme and the capitation grant, has only three teachers as teachers turn down postings to the village due to lack of basic social amenities.

Appealing to stakeholders to provide teachers bungalows for the school, he said even though the school had its old students in some of the tertiary institutions and others in the educational sector, they prefer to teach in the cities due to lack of accommodation and other facilities. Togbui Agbenyo called on the TMA to employ five youth of the village who are willing to teach in the school into the National Youth Employment Programme and to complete building the kitchen to be used for the feeding programme that has been abandoned at the lintel level for the past one year.

An Institutional Development Specialist of the Community Based Rural Development Project (CBRD), Mrs. Margaret Mpare, said the project was part of the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment's policies of poverty reduction. She called on the residents of the village to support the project through the provision of sand and communal labour to help supplement the meagre money allocated to the project. Member of Parliament for Kpone-Katamanso, Mr Joseph Nii Laryea Afotey-Agbo who issued a cheque of four million cedis (GH=A2 400) to the school for the payment of teachers' salary from May to July, promised to supply the community with six trips of stones, iron rods and roofing sheets for the school project.