As part of the Government decentralization agenda, the scholarship secretariat has been decentralized to the Bongo District Assembly of Upper East Region.
In line with this, 64 vulnerable tertiary students can now heave a sigh of relief, as the scholarships secretariat have paid their school fees to enable them stay in school and learn.
This came to light when the District Chief Executive DCE Peter Ayinbisa Ayamga, presented to the beneficiary students, letters of payment of their fees into their various schools’ bank accounts.
During the presentation, DCE indicated that the district was given GH₵64,000.00 to support brilliant but needy students who had gained admission into the tertiary institutions and that over 200 students applied for the grant in which an interview was conducted to select the beneficiaries. Some of the beneficiary as high as GH₵2,850.00 while other beneficiary received was GH₵800.00.
He advised the students to focus on their studies to enable them acquire the necessary knowledge that would empower them to contribute to poverty reduction in the area and accelerate sustainable development.
Mr. Ayamga explained that, has enable many students in the district who might not have had the opportunity to benefit from the grant.
The DCE therefore appealed to government to consider decentralizing every sector recruitment exercise to the various district levels and added that this would enable many of the indigenes benefit from such initiatives.
This, he said, would eliminate the situation where people are recruited outside the district when there were lots of qualified people in the various districts and added that this would help solve the unemployment situation especially in the less endowed districts.
The students expressed gratitude to the Bongo District Assembly and government for the support and promised to study hard to come out well-equipped to contribute meaningfully to nation building.
A beneficiary of the Zuarungu Nursing Training College stated that the support was a big relief to him as he found it difficult to pay all his fees last year.
Mercy Awintanga, another and student of University of Cape Coast revealed that she could not pay her fees last year due to extreme poverty as result of the business her father was doing to support the family had collapsed.
Story filed by: Emmanuel Akayeti
