MiDA To Construct 278 Classroom Blocks

The Millennium Development Authority (MiDA), the implementing entity of agriculture and rural transformation project, is to start the construction of 278 three and six-classroom blocks in all the 30 districts of the three intervention zones of MiDA.

The three zones are Northern Zone, Southern Zone and Afram Basin Zone, covering 30 districts in eight regions.

The Millennium Challenge Account’s (MCA) funded project will also construct 25 units of teachers’ accommodation, as well as nine information and communication technology (ICT) centres across the intervention zones of the $547 million five-year programme.

It is part of the second phase of the schools project under the rural development project component of the MCA Ghana Compact.

The schools will be connected to electricity and furnished with desks, cupboards and teachers’ tables and chairs with ancillary facilities such as lavatories and jumbo-sized plastic water reservoirs for rain harvesting and water storage.

This came to light recently when the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MiDA, Mr Martin Eson-Benjamin, inaugurated a modular teacher training programme to train 260 teachers.

The training programme, which commences on August 2, this year, is being conducted in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to sharpen the skills of the pupil teachers to enable them to man the MiDA-built and refurbished schools.

The teachers, who are all pupil teachers already on the job, have been selected from the communities in which the schools are based, to encourage their long stay in the schools.

It will also stem the problem of shortage of teachers in the nicely refurbished schools and avoid teachers refusing postings to remote areas.

The USAID, which is responsible for the selection and the training session, has in turn appointed the International Foundation for Education and Self Help (IFESH), an American NGO working in Ghana, to train teachers from all the three intervention zones of MiDA.

The five-year poverty reduction project has so far been refurbished and handed over 30 primary schools at the cost of $2.2 million, and awarded contracts for the refurbishment of additional 30 flood-affected schools in its Northern Intervention Zone.

Mr Eson-Benjamin explained that MiDA had adopted an integrated approach to poverty reduction and, therefore, wanted to ensure that the classrooms were properly manned to deliver quality education comparable to what pertained in the towns and cities.

The idea of providing state-of-the-art schools, as espoused by drafters and officers of the Ghana Compact of the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), was to reassure and afford the farmers access to social amenities such as schools, water and electricity, in order to encourage them to concentrate on their core business of farming.

Mr Eson-Benjamin said provision of schools with support facilities supplied to make the lives of farmers the main targets comprehensively better towards poverty alleviation.

“Needs assessments and validation of the selected projects have been completed, and I am happy to say that there will be water and sanitation projects to complement the educational facilities,” Mr Eson-Benjamin stated.

The IFESH Programme Co-ordinator, Mr Kwesi Dzidzienyo, said the 260 teachers would be trained in a period of two years, and that the USAID/IFESH was in talks with the University of Cape Coast (UCC) to award them with certificates.

He said the modular course would be in four- and three-weeks during vacations, so that the teachers could be in the classroom all year round, adding that the programme would be conducted at Abetifi to serve the Afram Basin Zone, Adjumako for the Southern Zone and Tamale for the Northern zone.

The MCA Ghana Compact has three main components being agricultural transformation, which involves the raining of 60,000 farmers grouped into farmer-based organisations and the provision of inputs and credits for agricultural cultivation.

In addition to this is rural development project, which aims at the provision of basic needs such as water, electricity and developing agri-business for marketing the produce, as well as the transportation project which is aimed at constructing trunk and feeder roads to improve food distribution for domestic use and for export.