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| Cynthia Lumor |
Essiama — MTN
Ghana has completed the construction of a $100,000 Information Communication
Technology (ICT) center for the use of communities in and around Essiama in the
Elembelle District of the Western Region.
The centre is to
bridge the digital divide between the served and under-served communities in
ICT use. The facility was put together in partnership with the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP).
MTN
corporate services executive Cynthia Lumor observed that the use of the Internet
is crucial to national development and the centre would help rural and
semi-rural students in their ICT studies. Mrs. Lumor said the centre would
serve about 9,500 people in five communities, adding it would operate as a
study centre for over 3,000 students from about 10 schools within its catchment
area. She revealed that MTN has invested over
GHC9, 668.815.27 million since the establishment of the MTN Foundation on
health, education and economic empowerment across Ghana.
She noted that
the beneficiaries of the foundation include school children, teachers and
hospital patients. "The economically disadvantaged
communities have benefited from the provision of boreholes, traffic lights,
school buildings, libraries, ICT centres, medical equipment, hospital ward,
polyclinics, operating theatres, job training and the capitalization that the
MTN Ghana Foundation has founded"
The UNDP
partnership advisor, Mr. Fred Ampiah, said the centre would help the people in the
communities, especially students, compete with people in other parts of the
country since education is one of the avenues for developing a nation. The
chief of Essiama, Nana Kofi Amgboe IV, appealed to MTN to assist Essiama
Secondary/Technical School with 'a modern science laboratory.
Public
Agenda Ghana