Rural and Community Banks have been urged to expand their scholarship schemes to cover prospective students in teacher training colleges who hail from their areas of operation. This would augment government efforts at producing more qualified teachers to handle the affairs of basic schools in remote communities. Shareholders of the Awutu-Bawjiase Area Rural Bank made the suggestion at the bank's 17th annual general meeting at Bawjiase in the Central Region. The meeting expressed satisfaction at the excellent manner the board of directors, management and workers of the bank had been administering the affairs of the bank. They therefore unanimously raised the sitting allowance of the board members to encourage them to work harder. According to the shareholders, although some viable rural and community banks, including the Bawjiase Area Rural Bank, had in recent years, been very supportive in the promotion of basic and secondary education, more still remained to be done to man rural schools with adequate trained teachers. The shareholders expressed the belief that directors and managers of rural and community banks wishing to assist prospective teacher trainees to accomplish their dreams could fashion out comprehensive scholarship schemes under which beneficiary students could be bonded for a period of five years to work in the catchment area of the sponsors on completion of their training. Majority of male shareholders who attended the meeting appealed to the board to provide male artisan and trading shareholders with micro credit facilities as was being done to female counterparts to enable them to also improve their small scale businesses. Emmanuel Kwapong, Managing Director of ARB Apex Bank, and E.K. Osei-Bonsu, President of the Association of Rural and community Banks, commended directors, management, and workers of the Bawjiase Area Rural Bank for their impressive performance over the years. They maintained that their excellent work output had resulted in the consistent growth of the bank in the past six years, thus making it one of the leading rural banks in the country. Mr. Kwapong and Mr Osei-Bonsu expressed the hope that the board, management and entire work force of the bank would step up their team work to realize the bank's dream of becoming a member of the 'Club 100'. Emmanuel Kofi Osei, chairman of the bank's Board of Directors, thanked both shareholders and customers of the bank for their co-operation and mutual understanding and appealed to them to increase their shareholdings and deposits to strengthen the financial base of the bank. Source: GNA