Mahama presents laptops to schools

President John Dramani Mahama on Thursday presented 2,200 laptops to 48 senior high, vocational and technical schools in the Upper East Region.

Thirteen of the beneficiaries were private schools.

President Mahama made the presentation at the Bolgatanga Girls Senior High School as part of a day’s working visit to the region.

The distribution of laptops to schools is an initiative of government under the Ministry of the Environment, Science, Technology and innovations as part of the Better Ghana Agenda Information Communication and Technology (ICT) Project, which began in 2010, to assist students to access ICT skills.

President Mahama said the Upper East Region came after other four regions had benefited from the laptop distribution programme and appealed to other regions that had not received their consignments to exercise restraint.

He said the world had become a knowledge society, hence the need for all students to be equipped with skills in ICT.

He said plans were also underway to experiment Electronic Books (ebooks) and would be scaled up to ensure that students readily got access to reading their textbooks via the internet.

He called on the students to take their studies seriously to ensure that the falling standards in education were remedied.

Dr Musheibu Mustapha-Alfa, the Deputy Minister of the Environment, Science, Technology and Innovations, said his Ministry had made it a priority to equip all schools in the country, and reiterated that the computers were meant for students to use to improve on their knowledge in ICT.