EDAIF supports two communities in U/W
The Export Trade, Agriculture and Industrial Development Fund (EDAIF) has given GH¢12,000 to renovate the Nator-Duori community basic school and another GH¢13,000 for an improvised ambulance for the Manyeryiri health facility in the Upper West Region.
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The donations came from a GH¢220,000 special fund set aside by EDAIF to support needy communities across the country as part of its social responsibility.
The North Zone Manager of EDAIF, Mr Frank Dan Enyimayew, said the Nator-Duori Primary School and kindergarten in the Nadowli-Kaleo District was chosen because it needed urgent repair works on the main structure, which was bursting at the seams due to the increasing school population.
Tricycle as ambulance
At Manyeryiri in the Wa West District, EDAIF purchased a tricycle and modified it into a vehicle that could perform ambulance services for the communities that accessed the Community-based Health Planning Services (CHPS) facility.
Mr Enyimayew said the beneficiary facilities were determined by the districts with the involvement of the communities to make them relevant to the people.
The Nator-Duori school serves five communities and is situated at the heart of deprived farming communities. Some of the pupils commute long distances on foot from to school daily.
The combined set of the kindergarten and primary has six classrooms, and the headmaster, Mr Moses Zumasigee, said some classes were combined because of the inadequate facilities.
The Director of Education for Nadowli-Kaleo District, Mr Valentine Domapielle, said the intervention from EDAIF was most welcome given the deplorable state of the physical structure of the school.
He said population growth and increased enrolment meant the school needed expansion or an improvement on the existing structure, and said the donation was a big relief in that direction.
The Community Health Officer at the Manyeryiri CHPS compound, Mr Calistus Daabung, said the tricycle ambulance was worth an aircraft to the people given how remote the community and surrounding areas were from a standard health facility.
Means of transport
He said he himself had no means of commuting to the remote communities around his area following the breakdown of his official motorbike, and patients, including women in labour, were carried at the back of people from long distances for medical treatement in times of emergencies.
He appealed for a bridge to be constructed over the stream in the community to enable smooth travel from the community during the rainy season.
Indeed, the CHPS compound serves six communities in the Wa West District plus some five communities in neighbouring areas in the Northern Region. Apart from a newly constructed basic school in a neighbouring community, Manyeryiri and surrounding communities have no schools, no source of potable water, no roads and no standard health facility.
The CHPS compound is - at best - an elevated first aid post, and thus, does not detain patients.
The Health Director for the Wa West District, Madam Basilia Salia, said the lack of ambulance services in the area had resulted in preventable deaths in the past.
She said the situation always got worse during the rainy season when the stream got full to the brim and cut the community off from other areas.