PATRONS OF public libraries in Sunyani, the Brong Ahafo regional capital, now have to pay money before they get access to read books in the only public library in the municipality.
Officials of the Ghana Library Authority have issued a directive compelling members of the reading public to pay 20p before they are allowed entry into the public facility.
Users of the facility in the municipality have cried foul about the new development which started about two weeks ago, asking why a public library should charge fees before access is allowed.
The development, DAILY GUIDE learnt has affect attendance at the facility in recent times since majority of the users said it was not proper to charge entry fees at a public library.
However, staff of the Sunyani Library told DAILY GUIDE that their impress has stopped coming and that they have no money to settle their utility bills, hence the introduction of the new ‘pay and enter’ policy.
The Regional Director of the Ghana Library Authority, Mr. Baada, also confirmed that the tariffs were introduced to keep the facility running since no money was available to pay their bills.
According to him, since the year begun, they have not yet received their impress, making it extremely difficult to operate.
To add salt to injury, Mr. Baada mentioned that the Regional Library has been put on pre-paid meter, compelling them to resort to the unorthodox means to collect money from the reading pubic to buy meter units to power the facility and to pay for the cost of the dailies they bought for the public to read.
The GLA regional boss revealed that the institution, which is under the Ministry of Education, was in a sorry state because they have been starved of funding for a quite a long time.
He disclosed that in 2011 and 2012 for instance, only two month’s impress was paid respectively for the whole period and six months into 2013, nothing has been paid to them to survive on.
He further indicated that all their vehicles have been grounded because there was no money to buy fuel.
Mr. Baada explained that the decision to charge fees was arrived at during a meeting with a section of the users of the facility who were then present. He said after telling the users the challenges his outfit was facing, the users themselves agreed to pay 20ps as entry fee and that became binding on all other users from then on.
He said he was not personally happy that fees were being charged because it is a public library and patrons were not supposed to pay fees under any circumstance before being allowed entry.
Mr. Baada stated that as soon as their impress was given to them the fees would be dropped. He expressed worry about residents’ failure to register in order to use the library as was done elsewhere.
He therefore appealed to users of the library to try and register with just GH¢5 for the whole year so as to help in the running of the facility.
