The Gold Fields Ghana Foundation (GGF) has made a bulk payment of GHC779,583.50 covering the tuition fees for 325 students in its catchments areas for the 2022/2023 academic year.
Previously, the money was handed over to the beneficiary students in the form of cheques, but this time round, the money was paid on behalf of the students directly to the universities. The idea is to eliminate delays in the registration of the students.
The institutions are the University of Cape Coast (UCC), University of Mines and Technology (UMaT), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and University of Ghana, Legon.
At a special programme held last week Thursday to handover the cheques for the bulk payment to the four universities, the Vice President of Gold Fields in charge of Operations, Michiel van der Merwe lauded the bulk payment idea.
The scholarship scheme, according to Merwe, is to support brilliant, but needy students from host communities to pursue full time studies at various levels of education.
According to him, the scholarship scheme has so far supported 2,448 youth from both Tarkwa and Damang and that currently, there are 531 beneficiaries pursuing various courses at the universities.
Turning his attention to benefits of mining, Michiel van der Merwe pointed out that “One of the benefits of mining is that through programmes such as this, hundreds of students in the mining communities do not have to worry about their fees or any increase thereof”.
According to him, since inception, the foundation has invested over $3.5m to cover tuition, hostel, accommodation, examination and other approved charges.
“The beneficiaries of this programme have also not taken the support for granted. The stellar academic performance coupled with their discipline and generally positive attitude have encouraged us to continue to doing more for them,” he said.
The Deputy Minister for Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, lauded the mine for investing heavily into the lives of the beneficiaries. He urged the latter to justify the investment made in them adding “we are going to track your progress to justify the investment made in you”.
The Member of Parliament for Prestea and the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for Tarkwa both lauded the mine and called for the sustenance of the programme.
Present at the programme were Gyasehene of Apinto Divisional stool, Nana Bediako Adarkwa, the Municipal Chief Executive for Tarkwa Nsuaem, Benjamin Kesse. Others were the Executive Secretary of Gold Fields Ghana Foundation, Abdel Razak Yakubu, the Regional manager of corporate Affairs, Emma Morrison, Head of sustainability of Gold Fields, Robert
