UN wants more seriousness in improving girls' education

Ms Ruby Sandhu-Rojon, United Nations Resident Coordinator in Ghana, has expressed worry at the low level of girls’ education in some parts of the country.

She said educating all girls was paramount in achieving the Millennium Development Goals on Poverty because girls’ education had a rippling effect on their communities and the country as a whole.

She, therefore, called for concerted efforts of all stakeholders to improve the situation.

Ms Rojan said this on Wednesday at a dialogue with stakeholders of the Northern Savanna Ecological Zone at Bolgatanga. The stakeholders include top officials of the Savanna Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) and the Ministers of the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions..

She explained that failure to educate all girls was the cause of the continuous migration of many young girls to the south for greener pastures.

She said the MDGs on Education and Food Security reflected positively at the national level but remained low in most rural areas.

She said UN agencies were helping to address those concerns by building upon actions that already existed to improve upon the weaknesses identified in the achievement of the MDGs.

Other areas tackled towards solving some of the problems are the School Feeding Programme, Income Generating Activities and Small Ruminants’ Programmes.

Mr Ismael Omer, Food and Agriculture Organization, (FAO) Representative in Ghana, said his outfit was providing food for over 60,000 people nationwide, 30,000 of them being children under the school feeding programme.

Providing details of the support, Mr Omer said, 49,910 beneficiaries from the Upper East and 7,500 from the Upper West benefitted.

On Supplementary Feeding, he said, the FAO provided to 17,198 pregnant and lactating mothers in the Northern Region,, 20,272 in the Upper East and 10,510 in Upper West Region.

He explained that 3,762 malnourished and under five children had received support in the Northern Region, 4,439 in the Upper East and 2,299 in the Upper West.