Okudzeto Ablakwa launches Furniture and Footwear Bank in North Tongu Constituency

The Member of Parliament (MP) for the North Tongu constituency in the Volta Region, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has opened Ghana’s first Furniture and Footwear Bank (FFB) in his constituency to ensure a constant supply of free Desks and Footwear to all school-going children in the area.

The purpose of the initiative is to ensure the total all-year-round elimination of ‘no furniture syndrome’ in public schools and ensuring that not a single child in the remote villages in the North Tongu District walks to school barefooted again.

The footwear comes in all sizes for all sexes, six months age babies to Junior High and Senior High Schools to access for free once the parents or students apply for it. The MP targets to stock the bank with 5,000 pieces of furniture and 2,000 foot wears all year round.

“We are establishing for ourselves a furniture, a footwear bank where the District will be guaranteed an all-year supply of furniture, so we are not going to be waiting for the MPs’ office, the Assembly, the DCE office or the GES Headquarters to go through all laborious process before furniture arrives, often by the time it arrives a term or two terms are gone,” Ablakwa stated at the commissioning of the project.

According to him, “this time we are going to have our own store of furniture so that anytime a call is made to the task team that, we need 50 pieces, 100 pieces, or a new school has just been built, the bank will have furniture readily available for distribution”.

The two in one bank – furniture and footwear bank is expected to eliminate in the District this phenomenon of vulnerable school children walking barefooted, “never again should it happen, going to school to learn in order to help mother Ghana tomorrow, it should be an ordeal or a perilous journey just because you want to obtain education which is a fundamental human rights according to the constitution of Ghana”.

Touching on some of the things he does in Education Sector in his area as an MP since 2013, he said, he has lobbied to get additional 800 professional teachers, increased from 5 people to 1 textbook ratio, to one core textbook to one student, motorbikes and laptops were supplied to all circuit supervisors for free, two-story building with 8 rooms was secured for the education directorate at Mepe as well as computers and a brand new pickup vehicle for the head, all ICT Teachers have received personal laptops, and more

These and other investments he said has produced good results as BECE performance has moved from 20% to 70% and WAEC from 30% to 60% and their new target is 100% because “we still push hard”, he added.

The MP has noted that “this has been largely a North Tongu local content-driven initiative from the metal fabrication, furniture production, and footwear supplies. I am enormously proud of Aveyime- based Amuga Metal Works, Borlor Shoes of Mepe, and Dodzi Carpentry in Battor.

“…Of course, I am absolutely proud of our team of sharp, dedicated volunteers who mobilized footwear donations from the national capital, amounting to some 30% of total available shoes for free distribution. We are eternally indebted to all donors.

The DCE for the area, Divine Osborn Fenu used the opportunity to admonish his colleague MMDCEs in the Region to put aside partisan politics and bring development to their people, “because politics is about allocating scarce resources to our people for everybody to benefits as a people, so when it comes to development, let’s put politics aside, let’s put propaganda aside”.

He lauded the MP for the furniture and footwear bank and appealed to all, especially citizens of North Tongu home and abroad to support the initiative to succeed as he promised the Assembly’s commitment to supporting it.

According to him, the current president means well for Ghana in the education sector hence free SHS and free internet in some schools countrywide.

The event was chaired by Torgbui Agbordzor (IV) Chief of Ngorlekpoe, on behalf of the Paramount Chief of Battor Traditional Area, he was grateful to the MP for investing in his people. Torgbui tasked all school-going children to learn hard to secure their future.

By Edzorna Francis Mensah