At a time when the reading culture among pupils in the basic school is fast declining, investigations conducted by the DAILY HERITAGE reveal that some staff members of the Ghana Library Authority have converted the Kaneshie Children�s Library into residential apartments.
The defunct learning centre partly hosts squatters who use the premises as storage room after selling their wares at the Kaneshie market.
Aside that, the old block housing the Teshie Children�s Library has also been taken over by tailors in the area.
The sordid state of the facilities, according to librarians who spoke to the paper under condition of anonymity, is as a result of the poor resourcing of the library authority and low motivation of staff.
Snippets of information gathered by the DAILY HERITAGE suggest that the current occupants of the Kaneshie Children�s Library have no plans of relocating soon.
The implication therefore is that, the authorities� hope of growing the habit of reading for edification in thousands of Kaneshie boys and girls will remain dashed.
The building, reminiscent of a colonial edifice, is in a deplorable state. The signpost announcing it as a public library is old and its fading inscription suggests it is consigning the importance of the reading centre to antiquity.
A daughter of one of the occupants, Faustina Abukari, told the paper that even though their parents work with the Ghana Library Authority, she finds it quite a task to get a story book to read.
Ironically, on the streets of Teshie, one of the most populous residential areas of Accra, children loiter when they could flip through a few pages of interesting books, or hack at the keys of the computer, to make more productive use of their formative years.
Reading and research, for now, is a pipedream for Kaneshie parents and well-wishers, as far as the children in this go-gay suburb are concerned, the paper can confidently report.
Kony Benjamin of Benakon Creations, the tailors who had taken over the old Teshie Children�s Library, intimated that he found the room a strategic place to start up his business, when the block was vacated by the government.
According to him, there is a new library the local authority is putting up for the community; but before it could be put to any meaningful use, it is in itself requiring generous doses of renovation. �Its roofs were ripped off by rainstorms recently,� he added.
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