School library converted into Assembly’s meeting place

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The Chereponi District Assembly (CDA) has turned the district?s library into a meeting place for assembly members thereby depriving pupils and students of regular access to the facility.

The district, which was carved out of the previous Saboba/Chereponi District in 2008, is constrained by infrastructure challenges and therefore took the decision to turn the library into a meeting place for assembly members to transact business of the assembly.

The Chereponi District Directorate of the Ghana Education Service (GES) also uses the library for its workshops and other engagements.

This has denied school pupils and students in the district the opportunity to regularly access enough reading material and conduct researches to improve their academic exercises.

There are 50 primary schools, 11 junior high schools and one senior high school in the district.

The consequence of the use of the library facility is the continued abysmal performance in the Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE) over the years as BECE performance for all basic schools in the district in 2012 stood at nine per cent and jumped to 20 per cent in 2013.

The assembly has instituted a number of measures to address the falling standards of education but none of these measures favoured improving the culture of reading amongst pupils and students, which is at the core of the fallen standards of education in the district.

Mr Seidu Umar, Chereponi District Librarian told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the library began as an individual initiative until 2008 when the CDA constructed a new structure to stock the books and also serve as reading place for pupils and students.

Mr Umar said the use of the 72-seater capacity library as meeting place for assembly members and for other workshops had been affecting its patronage as most pupils and students lost interest in visiting the library.

He said each time assembly meeting was conducted in the library, all furniture in the library was evacuated to make way for the assembly to bring in its own furniture adding that the practice had caused damage to most chairs in the library.

The books remain in the shelves in the library and nobody watches over them when the assembly members meet and GNA has gathered from some members of the public that some books get lost anytime an assembly meeting takes place but Mr Umar denied this.

Mr Isaac Mahama Imoro, Deputy Coordinating Director of CDA, said there was no other spacious hall in the district other than the library, hence the assembly?s decision to be holding its meetings in the library.

Mr Imoro said the use of the library for assembly meetings was a temporary measure to enable it (CDA) generates resources to build its own hall for meetings.

He said plans to construct a hall for assembly?s meetings were not part of its priority projects for 2014.

Mr Nelson Aborigia, Chereponi District Director of Education, described the situation as unfortunate and that it formed part of factors affecting education in the district.

He said even though schools in the district had separate libraries, pupils and students were supposed to use the district library after school hours, the reason it (district library) was built.

He told the GNA that GES in the district was therefore, making plans to stop using the library for its workshops and other engagements.

Source: GNA

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