KWADASO MP INITIATES EDUCATIONAL PROJECTS (PAGE 30, OCT 8)

THE Member of Parliament (MP) for Kwadaso, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, is undertaking one of the biggest educational projects in his constituency.
Estimated at GH¢105,914, the project, which targets public basic schools, is expected to address some of the problems militating against effective teaching and learning in public schools.
I recently accompanied Dr Akoto on a visit to basic schools in his constituency and I was shocked by the spectacle that confronted me.
The MP was visiting the schools to assess the infrastructure situation as part of the project he had launched.  
Dilapidated school buildings crying for rehabilitation and overcrowding in the classrooms were some of the scenes that greeted us on the tour.
At the Prempeh Basic Experimental School for instance, an average of 90 pupils were in each of the classrooms. The congestion has forced the authorities to run the shift system.
Indeed, I asked myself whether as a nation we take a serious view of the development of education. 
It is said that education holds the key to the development of every community. But let us ask ourselves whether our leaders really see it as such? 
Persistently, we have been made to believe that the chunk of the government’s resources goes into education but very little results come out of the investment.
Kwadaso is in Kumasi and anyone who hears the name of the area might think that all is well with it. 
But at least the educational sector is not the case and something seriously must be done to it.
Immediately he became the MP for the area, Dr Akoto made the development of educational infrastructure one of his priorities to help improve academic work.
 The Kwadaso constituency has 50 public schools and all of them are crying for various infrastructure. 
 The MP’s initiative has initially picked 10 schools which are located at Nwamase, Tanoso-Pokukrom, Asuoyeboa, Kwadaso township, Amanfrom, Takyiman, Topie-Oduman, Denkyemuoso and Kwadaso Agricultural Station.
When Dr Akoto was asked how he was funding the project, he said he had reached a consensus with the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) to provide some money to start with.
He is also using part of his share of the common fund to fund the project.
But what he is getting from the two sources are not enough to meet the volume of work.
Consequently, the MP is making efforts to contact the Ministry of Education and some banks for assistance to enable him to complete the project within his four-year term.
 He has also appealed to benevolent individuals and organisations to go the aid of the schools so that they could give the required foundation to the children to enable them to build on it to become useful citizens in future.