Mr Kwamina Duncan, Central Regional Minister, has counselled students of Odoben Senior High School (SHS) to avoid premarital sex as they seek to attain their ambitions.

He urged them to develop the qualities of hard work and perseverance as they are the requisite ingredients for a prosperous future.

"Education is the pivot to development, so you must focus on your books to be well endowed with knowledge to take up responsible positions to contribute your quota to national development," Mr Duncan said this when he addressed the students as part of his tour of the Assikuma-Odoben-Brakwa (AOB) district on Wednesday.

He urged the teachers and authorities of the school not to let the current infrastructural predicaments of the school affect their dedication and passion to work.

Mr Duncan told the students the President was well aware of the numerous infrastructural challenges that had accompanied the implementation of the free education policy adding that his competent team was working feverishly to resolve them.

He said there is the need for students to justify the investments being by parents and Government by ensuring that academic discipline reigns supreme the school.

Mrs Phyllis Arthur Simson, Headmistress of the school, decried the lack of infrastructure facilities including dormitories, classrooms, well-stocked library and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) lab.

The situation, she said, has forced some classes to be held under trees, hence affecting effective academic work for the over 1,415 students including 605 fist-year students.

Stephen Mensah, a first year student praised Government's free education policy which had eased the hard working burden of their parents and afforded them the opportunity to be educated.

The Regional Minister made a stop- over at Beidum to inspect a six- units class room block for Baidum Presbyterian basic school which was over 98 per cent complete.

The facility will replace a dilapidated school structure, which could best be described as death trap, with deep visible cracks in the walls with some part of the roofing being ripped off a situation the teachers confirmed has become a scar to effective teaching and learning.