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.