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Regional News of Sunday, 6 July 2014

Source: GNA

Group to register prison inmates for WASSCE/NVTI

The Positive Impact Group of Ghana (PIG), a charitable organisation, has launched a Prison Inmates’ Educational Fund to augment the government’s efforts in educating prison inmates.

The Group is set to soon begin registering a total of 50 inmates every year in Eastern Region to write the West African Secondary School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE), the National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI) examination among others.

In furtherance, the PIG has also acquired a four-acre land at Akwadum in the Eastern Region for the construction of an ultra-modern rehabilitation centre for ex-convicts to undergo a three-month orientation.

At a brief ceremony to launch the fund, Mr Michael Ato Korsah, a Fire Service Officer at the Eastern Regional Command and President of PIG, said it had instituted the interventions to enable prisoners to come out as persons acceptable to society and endowed with employable skills.

“This would help build a right mental attitude for their self-development and also help them to overcome all negative tendencies affecting their ambition,” he said.

Mr Korsah said all ex-convicts who successfully went through the PIG programme would be assisted and linked to interested institutions for employment while others would also be engaged in commercial farming to enable them to earn a living. He, however, entreated Ghanaians to endeavour to accept ex-convicts with kindness to enhance their reformation but not to “shun and drive them away into bad company again.”

Mr Batholomew Nketia, Board Chairman of PIG, said the fund would also be used to motivate inmates to serve as resource persons to teach other inmates. He appealed for more sponsors of the fund to boost the educational well-being of the nation’s prison inmates.

Nana Owusu Agyare II, Akwadumhene, who chaired the occasion, urged Ghanaians to revisit their culture of giving to the needy in society to attract God’s blessings.

The Positive Impact Group of Ghana is a group that is committed to providing social, spiritual, physical and material support to prison inmates, ex-convicts and the youth in the society.

It was founded in 2013 and currently has its headquarters in Koforidua.