Hon. Shirley Ayorkor Botchway (3rd Right) interacting with Rev. Naana Dannyame in front after presenting the items to her
AS PART of her efforts to facilitate teaching and learning, as well as promote quality education in the Weija constituency in the Greater Accra region, the Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, has donated a building to Anyaa D/A 1 & 2 Basic School.
The building, which comprises a staff common room, a computer laboratory and a library, was constructed at the cost of GH¢41,000 from the MP’s share of HIPC (Highly Indebted Poor Country) fund.
Ms. Botchway, who has taken education and health as her priority areas in the constituency, also donated two packets of roofing sheets and 25 dual desks to the school at a total cost of GH¢1,750.
In addition to this, she presented four television sets and four refrigerators, costing GH¢5,000 to the Ga South Municipal Education Directorate.
The items are to be presented as awards to hardworking teachers in the Ga South Municipal Assembly at this year’s Teachers Day Celebration, which is scheduled to be held in the municipality on October 27, 2011.
The presentation was in fulfillment of a promise she made after the school’s authorities had appealed to her to provide them with a computer laboratory, staff common room and a library to facilitate teaching and learning.
She promised to donate computers for the computer laboratory so the pupils are taught Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
Presenting the building and the items to the Anyaa D/A 1 & 2 Basic School, Ms. Ayorkor Botchway said the project was started over a year ago.
“I realized the very poor state of this particular school and I was quite appalled by what I saw because the whole place was flooded. We needed to do something about it to make the lives of the pupils comfortable.
“It is important that we look at how our children suffer and take steps to make their learning experience more comfortable, because I believe if the children are comfortable in the classroom, they would be able to understand whatever they are being taught better,” the MP recounted.
Ms. Botchway said she would continue to help improve the quality of education in the constituency.
She however appealed to government to provide educational infrastructure in all the deprived areas as it was the “primary responsibility of government to ensure that communities such as these are well equipped with good schools so that children who pass out of these schools could compete when they go on to the senior high school (SHS) with children who come from what I call the A class schools.
“These are kids who are very bright, they have good teachers and with good environment, good infrastructure, they could come out with the best,” the former deputy minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration noted.
A big constituency like Weija, which is the biggest in the country, she observed, had a few public schools that could not cater for the entire constituency, appealing to the chiefs in the area to provide land for construction of educational infrastructure.
Due to the lack of adequate schools in the area, the MP said parents were compelled to send their kids to private schools but such parents soon withdrew their children from these schools because they could not pay the exorbitant fees being charged.
Many of such school dropouts, she noted, were often engaged in child labour.
The headmaster of the school, Michael Boamah Wiafe and the Deputy Director in charge of supervision at the Ga South Municipal Education Directorate, Rev. Naana Dannyame thanked the MP for her kind gesture.
Rev. Dannyame, who received the television sets and the refrigerators on behalf of the Education Directorate, thanked Ms. Botchway for coming to their aid, pointing out that the items would go a long way to motivate teachers and increase their morale in the teaching profession.
By Awudu Mahama