The Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) has made available a total of 21 billion cedis to the Tamale Girls' Secondary School for infrastructure development and improvement.

This would enable the school to be used as a model girls' secondary in the three northern regions.

Alhaji Mustapha Ali Idris, the Northern Regional Minister, cut a sod on Friday for the construction of phase one of the project at Wamale, the school's new site off the Tamale/Yendi road.

The facilities are an assembly hall complex, a two-storey science block, a library, home economics block, kitchen and dining Hall valued at 13 billion cedis.

The rest are a 6-unit block of flats for teachers and two-storey, 12-unit classroom block valued at eight billion cedis and the project would be completed in one-and-half years.

Alhaji Idris said education, particularly girls, was high on the agenda of the NPP government and it would do everything possible to ensure that there was adequate infrastructure to improve the quality of education in the country.

He said there was not a single government girls' school in the Northern Region and this was hampering the education of the girl-child in the north, hence the need for the GETFund to assist Tamale Girls Secondary for quality education.

Alhaji Idris said phase II of the project would include construction of access roads within the school campus, extension of electricity and water to the site and fence wall on the 73 acre land.

Ms Mercy Amanquandoh, the Headmistress of the school, expressed appreciation to the GETFund and said she hoped more assistance would be given to the school to befit its status as a model girls' school.

She said the school was facing an acute water problem, infrastructure and inadequate staffing and this was leading to students dropping out of school and appealed to the contractors to speed up work so that students would move in as early as possible.

Source: GNA