Functional Literacy is expected to reduce illiteracy rate - Director

Koforidua, Nov. 10, GNA - Mr Lawson Sakah, Eastern Regional Director of the Non-Formal Education Division (NFED), said the Functional Literacy Programme was expected to reduce illiteracy rate, ignorance and poverty by 50 percent in 2015. He said in order to achieve that goal, the NFED through micro-finance, was helping learners to acquire occupational skills in gari, soap, beads, Kenkey preparation, palm oil extraction and Kente weaving to make them self-employed.

Mr Sakah said in that regard, the NFED was mobilizing illiterate adults, the youth and school drop-outs to teach them how to read and write in fifteen Ghanaian languages. Speaking in an interview with the GNA on Tuesday, he said learners apart from income generating activities were being helped to embark on development projects in areas as tree growing, water purification and agriculture in general. Mr Sakah therefore appealed to the government to inject more funds in the Functional Literacy Programme to enable it to cover more adults. He said adult classes were free and that with the financial support from the government, more adult literacy classes would be opened in the districts.

Mr Sakah called on chiefs and opinion leaders to support the literacy programme in their respective towns and villages by encouraging adults to attend literacy classes and urged them to allocate land to learners to embark on agriculture. He said the NFED was working with Hunger Project and World Vision-Ghana to ensure the smooth running of the literacy programme. Mr Sakah said with increased budget allocation to the NFED, it would acquire more incentives to motivate literacy facilitators to teach in the literacy classes. 1