Assembly woman appeals to Education Ministry for assistance

The Assembly Woman for Tepa Dwaaho in Ahafo Ano North Municipality in Ashanti Region, Comfort Darbo, has appealed to the Minister for Education, Mathew Opoku Prempeh to address shortage of teaching and learning materials in public schools.

According to the Assembly woman, there are many public schools in deprived communities in Ghana seriously lacking teaching and learning materials due to reports of shortage of the materials.

She said while the situation, which frantically affects teacing and learning activities especially at the basic level prevail, and appear troubling to parents, teachers and stakeholders in the education sector, people are not willing to stand up and speak for these vulnerable schools due to fear of victimization.

The Iron lady made the appeal to the Minister when he appeared at Danquah Institute (DI) Leadership Dialogue Series organized in Accra recently.

She said she got the hint of the shortage of the teaching and learning materials in her electoral area when she was briefed by parents noticing the negative impact of the unfortunate development.

According to the Gender Activist, many communities would heave a sigh of relief should the Minister pay adequate attention to the issue and address it before it gets out of hand.

The appeal, which was made in the middle of the programme during question time, attracted rapturous applause from the audience who stormed the event grounds to listen to the Minister for Education on leadership.

In response to the appeal, Mathew Opoku Prempeh said he was familiar with the issue but explained that the poor decentralization of activities was actually the cause of the problem identified.

He said distribution of these teaching and learning materials which is compulsory, obviously required serious monitoring and supervision.

This, he said would make sure the items been distributed would get to their final destinations without any fraud along the distribution chain.

He said there had been reports of scandals along the chain of the distribution under his predecessor which was unfortunate and would be checked and addressed to forestall these reports of shortage of the items.

"You can sit up there and brag, but whether it will be delivered is another matter ", he said soberly.

According to the Minister who doubles as an MP, the administration of President Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo was very concerned about positioning the education sector properly, and would therefore create an enabling teaching and learning environment to sustain and promote academic activities in all public schools.

In addition, he said the government considered the supply of these teaching and learning materials as necessary and one of the priority areas adequately been supported with national resources.

Aside that, he revealed government plans to improve the curricular, introduce new technology capable of making accessibility to these teaching and learning materials easy in all public schools.