Asutifi North District closes down

Kenyasi (B/A), Sept. 07, GNA - Mr Opoku Peprah, Asutifi North District Chief Executive, has announced that the Assembly would support 189 students from the district, who are currently pursuing a four-year diploma course in teacher- training at the Wesley College in Kumasi. The DCE said, the assembly would allocate 94 million, five hundred thousand (94,500,000) cedis for the programme, explaining that, each student would be given 500,000 cedis each year for the remaining three years.

Mr Opoku Peprah, who made this known at the closing session of the assembly, indicated that, the assembly needed to do this together with other schemes to retain the teachers, when they completed their respective courses and took up appointments in the district, adding that, by so doing, effective education would be promoted in the district. He continu ed that scholarship schemes had also been instituted to offer assistance to needy but brilliant students in the district, adding that, the introduction of the capitation grant and the school feeding programme had increased school enrolment, thereby placing a lot of responsibilities on the assembly to augment government's effort in providing infrastructure to ensure effective teaching and learning. The DCE called for a collaborative effort in enforcing bye-laws on refuse disposal and said the assembly would endeavour to provide the needed refuse disposal facilities, adding that, a new system of waste collection would be introduced by engaging the services of 25 youths, who would be provided with safety clothing and tricycles to go round collecting waste at selected points.

Mr Opoku Peprah also announced that a reciprocal visit by the Mayor of Gary and President of the Great Basin College in the United States was being arranged for early March, next year, which would lead to the signing of a memorandum of understanding, following a visit to Chicago in the United States by a five-member assembly delegation. He said plans were being made to send 10 brilliant students to study mining at the Great Basin College, who would later be absorbed by Newmont.

Mr Ben Nsenkyere Nsarbeng, the Presiding Member of the Assembly expressed gratitude to God for protecting the lives of all the members during the four-year working period. He urged the outgoing members to use the experience gained to help the community.

Mr Kofi Baffour-Asare Jnr, the Asutifi District Health Insurance Manager, thanked the district assembly for providing the scheme with a vehicle and an office and appealed to the assembly to further provide his outfit with bicycles to enable their agents go to the hinterlands to register the people. He said 17,896 people were registered in 2005 and from January to June 2006, 27,939 had also been registered with the scheme.