Madam Rose Tenkorang, Effutu Municipal Director of the Ghana Education Service (GES) has called on all stakeholders in Effutu to embrace the Double-Track System since it would enable all student who qualify for second cycle institutions schools to be admitted.

She said government wants the Senior High School (SHS) level to be the basic qualification for “every Ghanaian child” irrespective of once political affiliations, social background and religion, among others.

Madam Tenkorang was addressing stakeholders in education on the Double Track System at a town hall meeting held at Winneba, where she also talked on the various government flagship programmes. The meeting was organized by the Ministry of Information.

“It therefore behoves on all and sundry to accept it, so that as a people we would all reap the numerous benefits associated with it.”

She said some of the major challenges confronting the Double Tack System include, accommodation, heavy work load on teachers, no holidays for managements of the schools, as well as students carrying home their luggage after vacation to pave way for their counterparts.

Madam Tenkorang said Effutu Municipal’s Winneba SHS is among the 44 Senior High Schools in the Central Region selected for the Double-Track programme, adding that 504 students graduated from the school in 2018, whilst 389 were admitted for the double track this year, and projected that the number may increase to 778 in 2019.

She said the essential features of the school calendar has also changed, saying that, previously (Single Truck) the School Calendar was 1,080 hours per year, while with the Double-Track is 1, 134 a year, teaching days has reduced from 180 to 162, while number of days in school has also reduced from 265 to 225, with the average vacation/holidays for teachers increasing from 84 day (12 weeks) to 112 days (16 weeks).

She appealed to development partners to support, especially the GETFUND to help in infrastructural development.

Mrs. Hashim Hasnau a staff of the Effutu Directorate of the Ministry of Agriculture talked on the Planting for Export and Rural Development initiative, saying that, the project is to enhance rural development and to ensure the production of exportable crops.

According to her, the Effutu municipality has decided to cultivate Cashew and Coconut because the two crops have high economic returns.

She said there has also been a community sensitizations programme on the initiative for 312 farmers 13 communities in the area, and that, a total of 121.2 hectares had been earmarked for coconut plantations and 19.2 hectares for the cashew projects.

Mr. John Ninson, Effutu Municipal Chief Executive announced that seedlings for the programme would be in soon and distributed to the trained and registered farmers free of charge.