The Amenfiman Rural Bank Limited has constructed and handed over a 14-seater modern sanitation facility to the Asankragwa Senior High School, at Asankragwa, in the Amenfi West Municipality of the Western Region.

The project is also complemented with a standby water tank.

The initiative was facilitated as part of the Bank’s corporate social investment for the communities within its catchment area.

Officials of the school say the donation is a great deal of relief because they have had to endure the lack of decent sanitation facility for many years.

The donation by the rural bank is also part of efforts targeted at encouraging high standards of sanitary conditions and meets the Sustainable Development Goal Six (SDG 6) which preaches Clean Water and Sanitation.

Safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030, therefore requires investment in adequate infrastructure, provide sanitation facilities, and encourage hygiene.

At a special ceremony to handover the facility, Member of the Board of Directors, Edmond Afful, reiterated the need to support sanitation in the school.

According to him, because the bank is owned by the people, part of the profit needed to be committed to developing the communities within the catchment area and empower the people, especially the youth.

He added that for the bank to do more, it will depend on how the project is maintained by both the school and the community.

Statistics from the Education Management Information System (EMIS) in 2017, revealed that 7,332 out of the 20,738 public basic schools in the country did not have toilet facilities, while 6,922 did not have urinal facilities.

Headmaster of Asankragwa SHS, Victor Yanney, expressed gratitude to the Bank for the project.

He also promised the school will ensure the facility properly maintain.

CEO of the bank, Dr Alexander Asmah, said he was very excited by the project and encouraged the old students to continue supporting the school.

Globalisation and E-library

Himself an old student, Dr Asmah observed the school need to be abreast with growing trends in teaching and learning such as the use of robotics and computer learning, and the students must be exposed to these global trends because they are not only competing with their peers in Ghana but those around the world. 

Currently, the old students are working to commence the construction of an e-library for the school.

“It is in this light that the move by the old students to construct E-library for the school is apt and timely. I highly commend the leadership of the Old Students body for this visionary idea and encourage all the old students to support it make their contributions timeously,” he said.

According to him, the future of work must influence teaching and learning in our schools today. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and autonomous systems have become the order of the day and seriously shifting jobs even in knowledge-based jobs which were previously thought to be safe, he noted.

“We cannot continue to use traditional and out of fashion systems, methods and techniques to teach our students and expect that they are going to be relevant in the future.

'The 4th industrial Revolution is already here – are our student ready to compete with their global peers?” he questioned.

He spoke during the launch of the 60th Anniversary launch of Asankrangwa Senior High School under the theme, ‘60 Years of Growth and Development: Challenges and the Way forward’.