Sixty-four serving teachers and two retired ones have been honoured by the Ketu-South and Ketu-North District Directorate of the Ghana Education Service (GES) for their hard work and contribution to the promotion of education in their areas.
They include eight best teachers in 2009 and a backlog of other award winners made up 18 for 2005, 13 for 2006, 11 for 2007 and 12 for 2008.
The awards were delayed for the past five years due to lack of funds.
First prize winners took away 21 inch colour television sets, the second prize winners had table top refrigerators while those under the third prize category and the two retired teachers had sound systems.
Each of the eight 2009 award winners also had mobile phones donated by Vision Phones, an Aflao based phone dealer.
Amazing Love School, a private school complex at Denu was commended for its contribution to the development of education, having had its students winning the annual Presidential Prize for good performance in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) on six occasions.
Mr Sam Tumaku, Ketu-South District Director of Education with oversight responsibility for Ketu-North, noted that interest among teachers and workers in the awards scheme had waned because of the inability of the district assembly to support the event since 2005.
He asked all other stakeholders to contribute their quota in the motivation of the teacher and the revamping of education under the new education reform objective.
Mr Tumaku bemoaned the poor performance of basic schools in the district in the BECE and cautioned that unless drunkenness, absenteeism, laziness and poor cooperation among educational workers were eschewed, the future could be bleak.
Mr Gabriel Kploanyi, Volta Regional GES Director congratulated the award winners saying the event should be an inspiration for them to work even harder.
Mr Kploanyi also expressed regret at the poor performance of schools in the region and suggested the cooperation of stakeholders to strategize to salvage the situation.
Mr Joseph Amenowode, Volta Regional Minister, said government would continue to motivate teachers, tackle school infrastructure and logistics to raise educational standards.