Full Press Statement By Lawra MP On Support of Students

Good morning to you ladies and gentlemen of the media. I welcome you to this media encounter in which I wish to brief you on efforts I am making to fulfil some of my campaign promises. In the run up to the 2020 parliamentary election I promised to set up an Educational Trust Fund to be known as the Lawra Constituency Educational Support Fund which would provide some financial assistance to  brilliant but needy students in the constituency. Preparatory and consultative work is still on going to establish the Fund. In the meantime, there were demands made on me long before I won the election and  others made  soon after the elections.  Many students came to me appealing for support and some of their cases are very pathetic and need to be given attention even  before the establishment of the fund. It is on account of this plea that I decided to use part of my Common Fund allocation  to assist some of such students pending the establishment of the Support Fund. In trying to be fair, as much as possible, I have set the following criteria:

1. The first category of students to be considered are those attending the Colleges of Education.

2. The second category to be considered are those in Nursing Training Colleges.

3. Then Students in Technical Universities and other Orthodox Universities follow in that order. 

4. Cases of students in other institutions are also being considered. 

What it means is that, students in category 1 and 2 are of utmost importance and as much as resources will allow ,I will endeavour to cover all students under that before consideration is given to University students.  But I am also not oblivious of the fact that there may be isolated cases which may require special treatment. This I will try to attend to. 

Finally there is also the consideration of "first come first served" as part of the criteria.

The bottom line of all this is to support brilliant but needy students. I also need to explain that some of the applicants for this support are also being considered under the Government's decentralised scholarship scheme and so their names  have been removed from my list. For today's function, however, I am serving 38 students for now(first batch).

A second batch of 24 students will follow shortly, hopefully before the end of October.

Regarding the amount to be received by each student, it is a minimum of GHC 1000.00 per student  for now. In total an amount of GHC62,000.00 Is being spent in supporting the students.

Let me also use the opportunity to further explain that I have considered gender as an important yardstick. I have also  tried to spread to cover as many communities as possible in the municipality. Ladies and gentlemen of the media I have not underestimated the enormity of this task as I am aware that it is a huge one, but with time we shall be able to reach out to many more. I know that many people will be unhappy with me because  their names are not in these two batches. I also know that many who worked tirelessly for me during the campaign to get me elected, and yet have not found their names , will be very much disappointed. I apologise to all such people and plead with them to bear with me. Their concerns have come to my attention and I assure them that these concerns will be addressed in due course. This is the first of its kind and as such we are bound to experience some challenges. I will work to overcome the challenges going forward.

Ladies and gentlemen, earlier in the year I had spent a total amount of GHC 11,500.00 on the Brifoh Senior High School when the Girls Dormitory was gutted by fire. All the above expenditures have also gone into supporting the development of education in the Municipality as part of my vision for the Lawra constituency.

I wish at this stage to appeal to the people of the Lawra constituency to remain united so that together we can collectively develop the constituency. I  thank you all.

God bless us all.