The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) says it has been fair to the inhabitants of the Ashanti Region as far as infrastructural projects are concerned.
This comes in response to concerns raised by some residents that the region has been neglected in terms of development.
However, the Executive Director of the GNPC Foundation, Dr. Dominic Kwesi Eduah, insists that the region has received its fair share of development, as GNPC has embarked on 123 projects in the region alone.
He says this is a testament to the corporation’s commitment to embarking on need-based projects in the Ashanti region.
“We’ve done 43 classroom blocks in the Ashanti region, then you add the sanitary facilities, you add the AstroTurfs, I know we’ve done 10 of that and then other facilities. When it comes to boreholes, we’ve done 57. So putting everything together, GNPC has actually given out 123 projects in the Ashanti region. That’s why I said that we have been very fair to the Ashanti region,” he said.
According to Dr. Eduah, the GNPC has received requests from some traditional authorities in the region and is considering embarking on such projects as well.
“We’ve not ended. We’re still on. We still keep getting requests from the traditional authorities and other opinion leaders in this region and the board of trustees is considering it. We will surely come back on those requests,” he said.
Dr. Eduah made this disclosure during the commissioning of five projects in the Ashanti Region.
The projects included a three-unit classroom block at Adansi North District, a six-unit classroom block at Asokwa, a six-unit classroom block at Kumasi High, a twelve-unit sanitary facility, and a six-unit classroom block at Atonsu.
“I would like to thank the media for this great support you’ve given GNPC and letting Ghanaians know what the oil proceeds are actually being used for,” he added.
Dr. Eduah also highlighted some scholarships that the corporation has given out since 2017.
“In terms of scholarships, GNPC started this in 2017 and locally, GNPC has so far given out 7,800 scholarships. This year alone, we did 1,500. If you go to almost all the universities here in the Ashanti region, the records are there. In fact, we involve them in the selection. So every university here in the Ashanti region brings to the table five students from the students’ aid unit – students who have actually passed their exams and everything, in fact, some of them have first class and all that but can’t pay their fees. They select five of them and bring them to the table, so we don’t sit at the office and just select anyhow. We involve the institutions in the selection. Aside from that, we also give out foreign scholarships, and we’ve done almost 340 of that since 2017. In special areas like health, we’ve sent 200 students to Cuba to be trained as doctors and would be back next year to support the healthcare system in Ghana,” he said.
According to Dr. Eduah, GNPC is liaising with economists to come up with an assessment report to evaluate its operations to ascertain whether or not it is meeting its targets, as it set out to impact the lives of at least five million people in Ghana.