The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Youth Authority (NYA), Sylvester Tetteh Mathew, has cautioned that recruitment of young people in the country by politicians as party thugs to cause mayhem during elections will no more be countenanced.
He has, thus, called on politicians to invest in the future of young people and encourage them to be innovative and creative to take up their challenge in the near future, rather than recruiting them for political thuggery.
Mr Tetteh said this in a brief remark at a youth dialogue series, dubbed “Innovation and Creativity in Education”, to mark the International Youth Day 2020 held in Accra last week.
He urged the youth to see the Covid-19 pandemic as a challenge, and not a problem, urging them to create useful opportunities from the pandemic through innovation and creativity.
Mitigating Covid-19 effect
The president of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS), Isaac Jay Hyde, in a panel discussion, observed that there must be a standardisation of the country’s education systems to meet the global systems to mitigate the challenge of Covid-19 pandemic in education
He indicated that even though as part of measures to mitigate the challenges of Covid-19 pandemic, systems have been put in place, where lecturers and tutors are being trained to adopt the new transition of e-learning, most students in remote areas cannot have access due to issues of internet connectivity.
Speaking on the cost of data in the country, the NUGS president said there is the need for physical contact with students to commence, calling on government to introduce a shift system in schools as means of protecting education, even in the midst of the pandemic.
Inclusive education
An Instructional Technologist and Senior Assistant Registrar at the University of Education Winneba, Kumasi Campus, Daniel Konin, urged the government to collaborate with educational institutions to put in place systems to improve inclusive education in the era of covid-19.
- Konin said it is incumbent on institutions and policymakers to create avenue for the visually impaired and physically challenged to access education to ensure inclusion, even as many institutions push their studies online, as part of measures to fight the novel coronavirus.
He added that there is the need for the government to extend internet connectivity and partner with the youth to come up with useful ideas to help control the effects of the pandemic on the education sector.