Provide Children With Basic Educational Needs - Municipal Education Director

Ms. Augusta Akyaa Sarpong, Asante Mampong Municipal Director of Education, has advised parents to take good care of their children, by investing in their education and providing them with their basic needs such as nutritious food, reading materials, school uniforms and bags. Ms. Sarpong gave the advice during the Mampong Municipal Health Directorate Performance Review meeting for 2014, at the Mampong Midwifery Training School Auditorium. She explained that the high girls' drop-out rate at the basic school in the Municipality was due to pregnancies and abortions, and advised parents to spend time with their children. The Municipal Director stated that during the last quarter of 2014, the Directorate embarked on a number of activities in schools, in collaboration with the Municipal Health Service in many of their educational programmes. The activities, she said, included education on Ebola and Cholera, inspection of food vendors certificates, the preparation, distribution and sale of food in hygienic conditions in schools, education on hand washing in schools, and skills acquisition on the early detection of eye-related problems for 20 school-based health teachers. She said it was regrettable that most of the kitchen environments used by the school feeding programme were not hygienic, and the food served not nutritious and enough, while some of the classrooms were used by the community as places of convenience. The Director said, as a result, the Ghana Education Service (GES) has intensified education on reproductive health care for the girl child in schools, and banned the sale of some food items like ice-cream and toffees in all basic schools within the Municipality. Ms. Rita Anafu, Ashanti Regional Chief Nursing Officer, expressed concerned about the number of teenage pregnancies and abortions, which she said, stood at 480 and 125 respectively, in 2014, five of whom were girls between 10 and 14 years. She advised all stakeholders in education in the Municipality, including traditional rulers, religious leaders, assembly members, parents and teachers, to educate their wards to take advantage of the number of educational institutions, which include many Senior High Schools (SHS), Colleges of Education, Midwifery and Nursing Training School and a University, to better their education.