President Kufuor Hosts Children At Castle Gardens

President John Agyekum Kufuor has hosted Inmates of the Osu Children's Home in Accra and the Bawjiase Orphanage in the Central Region to an end-of-year party at the Castle Gardens, Osu.

President Kufuor who danced with the children was accompanied to the party by his wife Theresa, Vice President Aliu Mahama, Mr Kwadwo Mpiani, Chief of Staff, Mr Joseph Henry Mensah, Senior Minister. Addressing the children, President Kufuor said government is determined to improve the quality of education in the country through the provision of good infrastructure, adequate textbooks and better remuneration and conditions of service for teachers especially those in the rural areas. He said the government is determined to ensure that children remain in schools at least up to the Junior Secondary School (JSS) level.

The President advised children to become truants and asked parents to cater for their children and to give them the right training in order to reduce the number of street children in the country. President Kufuor said the assemblies have been directed to ensure that street children within their areas are sent to technical and vocational institutions to learn a trade to make them self-sufficient to enable them to contribute to national development. The Senior Minister, Mr Joseph Henry Mensah said workers at the Castle should consider themselves as very privileged to work in such positions at the top machinery of government and state as compared to their counterparts with similar qualifications in other public institutions.

He said privileges go along side responsibilities and should be a source of pride and inspiration for the workers to be more dedicated because their colleagues envy them for working at such an elite office within the Civil Service. Mr Mensah said the machinery to assist government to deliver on its promises to the people is weak therefore any reform within the Service must start from the Castle in order to improve on the efficiency of the Service. He said mistakes made by the staff at the Castle are more serious than those made at other places and called on the workers to set high standards for the government to able it to save enough money to pay civil and public servants as well as Ministers of State much better.

The Chief of Staff, Mr Kwadwo Mpiani said this year has been an eventful year for the staff and government to know themselves better for gradual consolidation of the new structures being put in place to realise the vision of President Kufuor and fashion out a clear direction for the country. He said within the first quarter of next year, all issues militating against the government would be cleared to enable it play a facilitating and co-ordinating role to achieve the government's objective and vision for the country.

The Chief of Staff said restructuring of the Office of the President is being studied for implementation next year and this might result in the reduction of staff. He added that some would be relocated and others redeployed. He said the area of concern is the attitude of the staff to work, confidentiality of documents in the office and unguarded utterances in public, which must stop and urged the staff to be careful about how they divulge documents and information to the public.