The acting President of the Shama Traditional Area, Nana Kwamena Wieno II, who is also the Chief of Yabiw, has commended the West African Gas Pipeline Company Limited (WAPCo) for consistently supporting the education, skills training and health needs of residents in its host communities.
The commendation was after WAPCo had presented scholarship awards to 142 students from a total of five communities in the Shama District of the Western Region and Tema in the Greater Accra Region.
The beneficiaries have been given full scholarship to enable them pursue their education at the tertiary level.
A significant number of them, 104, are from the Aboadze area (Aboadze, Abuesi, Dwomo, Lower Inchaban and Shama communities) while the rest are from Tema Manhean and Kpone.
Nana Wieno II said the scholarship package from WAPCo has always come as a great relief to parents who have difficulties funding the education of their ward especially at the tertiary level.
The beneficiary students are currently pursuing Medicine, Pharmacy, Engineering, Law, Social Sciences, Actuarial Science and Mathematics while a few others have already completed their first-degree programmes.
Speaking at the ceremony, the General Manager Corporate Affairs of the WAPCo, Dr Isaac Adjei Doku, said the company has invested over GH¢4 million on scholarship programme for the past 9 years.
“We believe that in the not-distant future, our host communities will have a number of professionals who would contribute to the development of their communities.”
Dr. Agyei Doku explained that the decision to keep investing in its host communities was premised on the conviction that through such initiatives the communities will have the needed human resources to address emerging development challenges in the future.
The company used the opportunity to also introduced the Community Youth Enterprise Scheme (CYES), which is a skills acquisition programme where beneficiaries upon completion are given start-up tools to enable them set up their own businesses.
Each year, WAPCo supports ten young people from each of their seven host communities in Ghana to pursue their education.
Five of the beneficiaries are selected under the Scholarship Scheme while the remaining five are drawn from the CYES.
The CYES provides youth who have completed basic education but could not pursue further studies due to financial constraints the opportunity to learn a trade of their choice in a recognized vocational and technical institutions.
“As a result, we have constructed a number of school projects in the district; key amongst them were the Abuesi Methodist Primary School, Shama Model School Junior High School and Kindergarten school blocks, and renovated the Dwomo Methodist Junior High School,” he said.
Dr Doku said after the introduction of the Free Senior High School Policy, the company reviewed the programme to support brilliant but needy students to pursue tertiary education in Ghana.
He said so far, “we have supported 447 students made up of 339 students in the mainstream scholarship scheme and 108 students under the skills acquisition programme”.
Shama District Director of the Ghana Education Service (GES) Afia Anoakoah-Quansah noted that WAPCo has continued to invest in the communities in which they operated and they must be commended.
By Eric Yaw Adjei|3news.com|Ghana
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