The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) handed over six fully furnished infrastructures to schools and a community in the Central Region on Saturday through its Foundation.
The structures include a 31-seater sanitary structure for girls at Ghana National College in Cape Coast and a 12-unit sanitary structure with a borehole and people with disabilities enabler at Abor in the Ekumfi District.
Others include a 160-bed capacity girls’ dormitory with a 12-seater sanitary unit for Mando Senior High School and Technical School, and a five-chamber Science Laboratory with an ICT centre capable of holding more than 500 students for Bisease SHS in the Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam (AEE) District.
Aside from that, the Foundation has built six-unit classroom blocks in 14 other schools since 2018, including Mosano SHS, Effutu SHS, Assin North SHS, Komenda SHS, Dunkwa SHS, and Abakrampa SHS.
The remaining schools are Mankesim SHS, Swedru SHS, Gomoa German SHS, Assin Jakai Junior High School (JHS), Ankafo JHS, St. Peter’s Catholic JHS, Assin Nyankmasi JHS, and Kuntenase Presby JHS.
The structures were built in response to a request from the GNPC Foundation, the Corporation’s corporate social responsibility arm that works to improve the well-being of all people in the country and to boost education development.
Rounding off the commissioning tour at a ceremony at Mando, Dr Dominic Eduah, the Executive Director of the GNPC Foundation, said the Foundation’s operations were driven by three thematic areas of focus; environment and social amenities, education and training, and economic empowerment.
With this, the Foundation aims to improve Ghanaians’ quality of life, believing that providing quality education and environmental cleanliness is critical to ensuring that every Ghanaian, regardless of geographical location, benefits from the oil money.
He stated that education was still an important platform for national development and that the foundation was investing in the sector to make it available to every Ghanaian child.
In addition, he stated that the Foundation had awarded 7,300 scholarships to Ghanaian students, with 320 of them studying special courses in the fields of medicine and other courses that Ghanaian universities had yet to show interest in, with a commitment to return to their communities to practise.
Around 320 are postgraduate students, while 200 are first-year students studying special courses at Ghanaian universities.
Through the Foundation’s environmental tidiness drive, Dr Eduah said his outfit had constructed 800 water systems across the country, with 70 per cent in the northern part of the country.
Notwithstanding, the region has benefited from six completed water systems projects at Ajumako Adu-Yaw, Assasan in AEE, Mangoase, Suro Dofo in the Gomoa East District, and Kafodzidzi in the Cape Coast Metropolis.
Dr. Eduah stated that the Skilled Artisan Project (SAP) will graduate approximately 2,000 artisans as part of the GNPC Foundation’s livelihood empowerment programme, having sponsored their training at the National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI) to obtain the certificate and craftsmanship.
The beneficiary artisans will be graduated in August after completing apprenticeships in various vocational skills such as plumbing, fashion design, carpentry, auto-mechanics, general electrical, hairdressing, interior designing and decoration, and aluminum fabrication.
While pledging the GNPC’s commitment to assisting communities and institutions in desperate need of infrastructure, Dr. Eduah urged facility managers and authorities to ensure that the structure was put to good use and encouraged parents to enrol their children in the school.
Reverend Ransford Nyarko, Chief Executive of AEE, thanked the GNPC for the gesture, saying it would help to improve education in the area.
He promised to work with all relevant stakeholders to keep the facility running.
The Headmistress of Mando SHS, Ms Roseline Ayikor, stated that the facility would significantly ease accommodation challenges for students in the 2023/2024 academic year.
“It will allow many girls who would otherwise have to be day students to participate in the boarding system,” she said.