By Iddi Yire, GNA
Mamfe (E/R), Jan. 20, GNA – McHammah
Engineering, a Ghanaian–owned electromechanical engineering company, has
donated a wet milling machine to the Mamfe Methodist Girls Senior High School
(MEGHIS) in the Akuapem North Municipality in the Eastern Region.
This machine will go a long to help the
students in their quest to produce paper bags from the stems of plantain and
banana as an alternative to plastics.
The donation was in recognition of the
school’s commitment and the students’ desire to explore beyond their academic
syllabus.
It would be recalled that a team of students
from MEGHIS won the 2019 edition of the World Robofest competition held in
Michigan, United States (US), beating opposition from the US, Brazil, Egypt,
Columbia, Mexico, China, South Korea, England, India, Nigeria and South Africa.
MEGHIS’s crack team of young science brains
were given a task which comprised building a robot to arrange boxes according
to a Binary Number given, this Binary Number is unveiled when all robots are impounded.
Among others, MEGHIS students also convert
plantain and banana stems into paper bags as an alternative to plastics; they
dry the stem, cut them into pieces, boil them and then mill the boiled stalks
for the pulp, then they dry it to get their paper.
Mr Ebenezer Hammah, Chief Executive Officer
of McHammah Engineering Company Limited, in an interview with the Ghana News
Agency (GNA), said the machine had been specifically designed to mill the stems
after it had been boiled, and within an hour it can mill half of a tonne.
He said his attention was drawn to the
effort being made by these young talents and the support they needed, adding
that “knowing I can be of help I invited them and through series of
conversations we were able to design what suits their purpose”.
Mr Hammah, who reiterated his commitment to
support these talents by providing technical support to enhance their
inventions, was hopeful that a lot of them could be good engineers and
architects.
He advised students to follow their dreams,
see and realize what as in them and pursue it, adding that “they should let
some masculinity aspect of their femininity come out so that they can actualize
their dreams”.
He underlined the need for other donors and
philanthropists to emulate the gesture, to unearth more talents.
Madam Sylvia Isabella Laryea, Headmistress
of MEGHIS, who received the donation on behalf of the School, thanked McHammah
Engineering and stressed that this would go a long way to enhance innovations.
She noted that, she least expected that
someone would come to the aid of these students; for them to be pounding the
raw materials, as such, for having such an innovative machine, they were
grateful.
Madam Laryea therefore, appealed to other
companies to emulate the example of McHammah Engineering and help with the
needed support to enhance innovations being championed by the School.
GNA