Henry Quartey
The Greater Accra Regional Minister-designate, Henry Quartey, has promised that, if given the nod, he will introduce a monthly initiative to improve sanitation in the Greater Accra Region.
The proposed monthly exercise has been dubbed the ‘clean your frontage initiative.’
Speaking during his vetting on Monday, he suggested that any day on the last weekend of a month, “we could get people to join hands in cleaning their areas which I term operation clean your frontage”.
“I believe that when we begin to do that and also educate people about the issues of dumping refuse in gutters and in the streets, that will in its way help as well,” Mr Quartey added.
To further improve sanitation, Mr Quartey said he plans to introduce a scheme to distribute dustbins across the region.
“We will start a pilot programme for one or two constituencies… and ensure that, district assemblies focus more on their respective districts and ensure good sanitation,” he outlined.
Ga language
The Minister-designate for Greater Accra again assured that one of the things he would treat as important, when approved, is the teaching and learning of the Ga language in schools within the region.
He said this is important despite the seeming shortage of teachers for the subject.
“I will lead the cause [to encourage the teaching of Ga in schools] and work hand in hand with the Ghana Education Service (GES). It should be in the syllabus, but the challenge is, are there enough teachers to teach Ga in the schools? We must make it a priority,” he told the Appointment’s Committee.
It recently emerged that attempts are being made to phase out the study of the Ga language in some basic schools in the Greater Accra Region.
This situation, school owners said, had been necessitated by the lack of qualified teachers to aid teaching and learning of the language.
Many concerned authorities expressed fears over the dire consequences on Ghana’s social fabric, heritage and cultural cohesion, especially among students, should schools refuse to include the Ga language as part of the curriculum.
No teachers
But the Minister-designate complained that the issue has been compounded because the few trained and available Ga teachers are transferred to other regions, instead of posting them to schools where their Ga language expertise would be needed.
However, when made the substantive Minister, Mr Quartey said, he will work together with relevant stakeholders in the Education space to ensure that the worrying trend is reversed.
“When given the nod, I’ll collaborate with the Ministry of Education and the GES to ensure that even the few [teachers] we have, are brought back to teach Ga in schools [in the region]. We will fall on other opinion leaders to support us in trying to grant scholarships for people to begin to take interest in learning Ga at the Bureau of Languages,” he promised.
