ADUKROM HEALTH C’TEE AWAITS REP FROM TRADITONAL COUNCIL

The Adukrom Health Committee is awaiting a representative of the town’s traditional council to join them as they seek to support health delivery in the town. The health committee takes its membership from established institutions in the town. It is currently comprised of a representative of the Christian community, Muslim community, indigenes of the town living outside the locality, the Municipal health directorate, sub district parent and some of the health workers. Its executives include Col. Rtd. Sally Odoi Gyampoh as its Chairman, Rev. Sampson Owusu as the Vice Chairman, and Mr. Iddi Salley as the Secretary. Speaking in an interview, secretary of the committee, Mr. Iddi Salley disclosed that the committee has sent two letters of invitation to the traditional council. He said “we sent them letters and we are waiting for their response”. He was however hopeful that traditional council will show up at their next meeting”. He again emphasized that their represented at the committee is important. “We really need them”, he stressed. The Adukrom sub district of the Akuapem North Municipality provides health delivery services for over ten communities within its catchment area. It is also a point of referral for three CHPS compound within the sub district namely Akunni, Aseseeso, and Abonse. It serves a population of 19,770 with 19 communities including Monu, Apirede, Akuni number 1 and 2, Domease Srokpo, Bepoase, just to mention as few As a health worker at the facility, Mr. Iddi lauded the establishment of a committee with the mandate of improving infrastructure for health delivery among other things. As a committee, its mission is “to work in collaboration with all partners to ensure that every individual, household and community in the district is adequately informed about health and has access to high quality health delivery”. He bemoaned a growing trend where relatives of patients become incensed when they are referred to hospital for further treatment. “This is normally in the interest of the patient but they think we are refusing to treat them”, he explained. The committee has prioritized the provision of an ambulance to convey referred patients to the Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Hospital. The health facility has requested the upgrading of the roads leading to the facility. This it believes will significantly improve the speed of health delivery in the sub-district. Health committee’s play an important role in health delivery as it assembles representatives of all stakeholders in health delivery. These stakeholders contribute their might to infrastructural development and sensitizations of the public on health related issues.

CELEBRATING INDEPENDENCE TO WHAT EFFECT

Ghana celebrates another independence day again, and this is the 57th time we are doing this. Of course among the league of independent states we hold so much pride to be counted among the pioneering nations in Africa. ‘The first country south of the Sahara to gain independence in Africa’ has always been the refrain. But the question of whether this independence should mean anything at all to us is a debate for another day. Most of us have also read and heard countless discussions on how meaningless our independence has been since we still depend on the west for most aspects of our economic development. The recent refusal of foreign donor agencies to support our economy with some estimated $700 million is seen by some as a recipe for national disaster. At this point we need to salute Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Anyway, we are still an independent state and what we must be committed to doing as to live our lives daily fighting for the realization of the dreams of our country’s founders for a truly independent society. You might agree that this is surely not what our founders wished for us when they shed their blood for our independence. To a lot of us, independence still remains a dream, a dream which has not been fully realized more than 57 years after it was conceived. Education, western formal education is a purely colonial initiative and an apparent sign of western cultural domination. However, it is one aspect of the white man culture we should determined to stick to as it refines and literal empowers us. Sadly, recent results reveal a steep downward slide in the performance of pupils at the Basic Education Certificate Examination. When close to 50% of candidates presented at an examination fails a great deal is wrong, it cannot be good. Aggregate six has now become as privileged as securing a visa to heaven. Save Okorase St Mary’s, no school produced candidates with aggregate six in the district. And this is from eighty-eight schools ranging from Obosomase to Kobokobo. This should certainly call for an urgent stakeholders meeting if we really control our own affairs and we have a say in our future. As independent as we are we don’t seem to care about the dwindling academic fortunes of our children. Children have been left to sort their educational life out with their teachers and this cannot be good. Our independence must be seen in the provision of quality education for our children. In the past when some of us schooled here, times were harder, learning was tougher but our results were better. Children, stick to your books. Parents don’t shirk your responsibilities. Because certainly we are independent and rightly so, our future depends on our own selves. Afehyiapa!!!!

PURSUIT OF ‘CHALE WOTE’ LEADS TO BOY 5’S DEATH

When a five year old boy decided to run after his ‘chale wote’ which was been washed away in the drains of Tutu Akupem as it rained, little did everyone know that he was running his life to death. The morning after that his lifeless body was found in a ditch whilst his slipper was seen lying beside the gutter. As he was playing in the falling rain, the five year old James Awuni, lost his slipper to the drains brimming with rain water. Not ready to let it go without a fight he run after it and apparently fell into the gutter. He was washed out like a paper, taken under the bridge at courtyard, through the nearby bushes, across the street and eventually left in the ditch about seventy meters from the main road. Recounting the incident to this reporter, a sobbing bereaved mother Ama Afi said she last saw his son about thirty minutes into the rain when it subsided a little. The boy sought permission to with his elder brother to go to their aunt who lived about fifty meters away. Little did she know it was just an excuse to go and play in the rain. The widowed mother of five said when they were unable to locate the boy a report quickly made to the queen mother who acted swiftly by organizing a search for the boy through the town. When they failed to locate the boy, a report was made to the Mampong Police Station. In the company of a search party assembled by the traditional council and the assembly man, the police went looking for the boy. When the lifeless body was found, it displayed bruises on the forehead, a deep cut at the back and many other injuries on the body. It is believed that these injuries were attained as the body was been washed through the bush. A barber in the town who saw the boy running through the rain shouted at him to leave to go home. This was however ignored as the boy continued to pursue his asset as it seemed. The boy who was yet to be enrolled in school is reported to be seen playing in the rain anytime the rains come down.

BASIC EDUCATION NEGLECTED as 43% fail BECE in Akuapem North

Nearly half of the total number of candidates presented for the Basic Education Certificate Examination by the Akuapem North Municipal Directorate in 2013 failed. This represents forty three percent (43%) of candidates from the Municipality at the examination. The percentage however indicated a marginal improvement of the 2012 results where forty five percent (45%) failed. Four schools in the Municipality had all their candidates failing in all the nine subjects they sat for. These schools are Lakpa M/A Junior High School, Addo Nkwanta Anglican Junior High School, Mamfe Young Souls Junior High School, and Mampong Demodeaf Junior High School. This is a repeated record of the number of schools with zero percent (0%) in the examination. As the pupils prepare for the next examination in June it is important that we pay a critical look at their performance over the past two years. Out of the two thousand four hundred (2400) registered candidates for the examination, Two thousand three hundred and eighty two (2382) candidates turned up to write. Reasons cited for the eighteen (18) absentees included pregnancy (5), travelled (3), dead (1), dropout (3), absent without reason (5). This is double the number who refused to turn up on the day of the examination. Less than one percent of the candidates received aggregate six with all of them coming from one school, St Mary Preparatory School in Okorase. This in actual figures is nineteen (19), comprising of eleven boys and eight girls. St Mary Preparatory is one of the fourteen schools who attained a hundred percent record in the Municipality. These fourteen schools with a total of three hundred and sixty candidates, representing fifteen percent (15%) of the total number of candidates from the Municipality passed in all subjects they wrote. Some highly rated schools like Nana Ankobea Takyiwa School in Mampong Akuapem and Akropong P.T.C Demonstration, who normally receive appreciable number of candidates with aggregate six disappointed this time around. In the order of performance, Nana Ankobea was overtaken from its long held first position by St Mary Preparatory; coming in second place is Akropong P.T.C. Demonstration with Nana Ankobea placing third. By way of giving further statistics of the results, nearly half of the candidates at the examination received aggregates between sixteen to thirty (16-30). This group carried a whooping forty nine percent of the candidates from the Municipality at the examination. The percentage in actual figures translates to one thousand one hundred and sixty five (1165) of the total number of candidates 2382 at the examination. Similarly, one hundred and eighty three (183) candidates scored between aggregate (6-15). The figure translates into a meager eight percent (8%). It can be deduced from the above statistics the worrying of the standard of education in the Municipality. Even though, the Municipality recorded marginal improvement in the performance of the candidates it presented, the record is not one to be proud of and efforts should be made to reverse it.