Paramount Chief of Paga launches Fao Festival

Accra, Aug. 27, GNA- Pe Charles Awia Awompaga, Paramount Chief of the Paga Traditional Area, at the weekend in Accra launched this year's celebration of the annual Fao Festival, with an appeal for assistance to enable the people build a Senior Secondary School (SSS). The paramount chief said the festival would be a ceremony to show gratitude to the gods and ancestors for protecting the people throughout the farming season and for a bumper harvest.

It would also offer the people the opportunity to plead with the gods and ancestors for continued good health and bumper harvest, joy and "new wives and new children to replace the old ones." Pe Awompaga explained that it was during the festival that true and faithful citizens congregate at home to be reminded of their cultural values and to plan for the development of the area. He said the celebration, which is expected to take place in December this year, would be under the theme: "Education, Key to Poverty Reduction and Human Resource Building".

The SSS building project is to start with an initial 500,000 million cedis for the construction of three-classroom blocks, an office, store, a library and an accommodation for the headmaster. Pe Awompaga said Paga had over 19 primary schools and seven Junior Secondary Schools, but did not have a single SSS or technical institute to absorb the thousands of JSS graduates.

He said most of the SSS, which were distant away from Paga were day schools, and students who gained entry into them covered long distances, riding bicycles or walking in and out daily, making them exhausted before getting to school or on reaching home.

Pe Awompaga said, consequently, many of the students abandoned school altogether, while the few who persisted could not perform well in their examinations.

Pe Charles Awia Awompaga said the Traditional Council had released land for the school project, and that the celebration of the festival would be an opportunity to solicit financial and material assistance, adding that the schools in the area had already started gathering stones for the project.

He also said the people volunteered their donkey carts and tipper trucks to supply sand and stones to the project site. Mr Abuga Pele, Member of Parliament (MP) for Chiana Paga, said it was high time a secondary school built in the area since the two nearest ones, Chiana and Sirigo, were not less than 10 kilometres away from Paga.

The MP said he had spent 12 million cedis for three years running on students in the SSS in the Constituency to improve education in the area.

Mr Pele expressed the hope that the District Assembly and the Government, through the Ghana Education Trust Fund would support the project to stem the tide of low enrolment into the SSS and the dropout rate.

This, he said would surely help harness the human resource for the development of the area. 27 Aug 05