People of Paga celebrates Fao festival

Paga (UER), Dec 05, GNA - Pe Charles Awia Awompaga, the Paramount Chief of the Paga Traditional Area, has appealed to sons and daughters of Paga to contribute to the construction of a senior secondary school to for students from the nine junior secondary schools in the area. He said it was necessary for the community to take up the responsibility of helping with development projects before the government could assist them.

Pe Awompaga made the appeal when he addressed a durbar of chiefs and people of the Paga Traditional Area during the annual Fao festival at Paga.

The Fao festival is celebrated by communities in the Kassena Nankana Traditional Area to give thanks to the gods for protecting the people throughout the farming season and also express their appreciation for bumper harvest.

The focus of this year's festival was soliciting funds for the construction of a senior secondary school for the area. It was on the theme: "Education, key to poverty reduction and human resource development".

Pe Awompaga said contributions and pledges towards building the school had yielded about 150 million cedis and appealed to the government to assist the community with the seed money to quick-start the project.

Prof John Kaburise, the Vice Chancellor of the University for Development Studies (UDS) who was the guest of honour, stressed the importance of education and advised the community to send their children to school.

He said the technological advancement in the world called for setting up of more ICT centres to train people to fit in the technological world. Prof Kaburise said the participation of women and people from the north into the UDS, which is a major constituency for UDS, was the lowest in the country.

''Women participation rate in strategic subjects such as Mathematics, Science and Information, Communication Technology (ICT) is depressing,'' he said and called for a change in the trend. Mr Abuga Pele, MP for Chiana/Paga, pledged 100 million cedis from his share of the MPs common Fund as seed money for the start of the school.

Mr Emmanuel Chegeweh, District Chief Executive for Kassena Nankana, said the district would do everything within its means to ensure that the community had funds to complete the school.