Scholarships for various tertiary-level courses have been awarded to 136 students in the Gold Fields Ghana Limited‘s operational area (Tarkwa and Damang Mines) for the academic year 2022–2023.
Two hearing-impaired students who will attend the Cape Coast School for the Deaf were among the beneficiaries, who were divided evenly between 84 men and 79 women.
Through the Gold Fields Ghana Foundation Scholarship Program, each student would get GH7,000 annually.
The entire cost for the 2022–2023 academic year would be $199,245.
Scholarship
The Executive Secretary of the Gold Fields Ghana Foundation, Abdel Razak Yakubu, explained that the scholarship programme was opened to students who had gained admission into any tertiary institution in the country.
To qualify, he explained, an applicant must either be a native of any of the company’s 19 host communities or must be resident in that community before Gold Fields started its operations in Ghana.
“Applicants complete a form which is issued by the foundation to community chiefs and assembly members.
Before a candidate is considered for an interview, the chief of the community must endorse the form as a proof that the candidate indeed satisfies the residency condition,” he said.
In addition to this, Mr Yakubu said applicants for this award needed to prove that they had obtained aggregate 12 or better at the WASSCE level, adding that “considerations are sometimes given to students who attended rural basic schools and continue to reside in rural host communities after senior high school even if they did not make the qualifying aggregate score”.
Mr Yakubu further noted that the Gold Fields Ghana Foundation scholarship programme was Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) bias.
One of the objectives of the programme, he added, was to support students in STEM programmes so they could take up roles in the company when vacancies arise, noting that “this is part of Gold Fields’ drive to improve its host community employment numbers”.
He encouraged the beneficiaries to exhibit socially acceptable behaviours on their various campuses and that honesty and integrity were also important.
“As scholarship beneficiaries, you are ambassadors for Gold Fields and you must carry yourselves as such”.
Grade
The Regional Manager- Community Relations Gold Fields Ghana (Tarkwa Mine), Robert Siaw, advised the beneficiaries to make maximum use of the opportunity and take their studies seriously, cautioning that if they failed to make good grades, their scholarship would be revoked.
The Senior Assistant Registrar at the Directorate of Students Affairs at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Theodora Oduro, advised parents of the beneficiaries to provide them with their needs to make them comfortable at their various schools.
A beneficiary of the scholarship programme, who will pursue Medicine, Judith Reese Obeng, thanked the Gold Fields Ghana Foundation for the opportunity.