Parents urged to invest more in their children’s education

Mr Abraham Mbido Bagyin, President of the Konkomba Students’ Union, has advised Konkombas to unite and take the education of their children, especially the girl-child, more seriously. He said there was the need for parents to strengthen the peaceful coexistence with their neighbours and discard negative cultural practices such as forced marriage to ensure that all children were sent to school. Mr Bagyin gave the advice during the annual general meeting of the Kpandai-Konkomba Students’ Union (KONSU) aimed at deliberating on the development agenda of the community and to see how best the youth could help to address educational challenges in the Kpandai District. He said education was the bedrock of development and regretted that forced marriages were rampant in the District, which needed to be reversed so that all girls would benefit from the Government’s policy of Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE). Mr Badyin expressed concern about the practice of playing record dance in the Konkomba communities to the detriment of education and appealed to the District Assembly to ban such activities to ensure that students had time to study. He said apart from students abandoning studies to attend the record dances, such activities were gradually killing the Konkomba cultural dance and urged the youth not to allow the cultural dance to lose its value. Mr Bagyin advised other students in the district to study hard to pass their examinations in order to justify the investments their parents kept making for their education. He appealed to the District Assembly, individuals, chiefs, opinion leaders, non-state organs and the Government as a whole to assist the Union financially to enable it support needy students. Mrs Rachael Nakorja, Headmistress of Kpandai, regretted the rate at which girls were dropping out of schools in the District and called for a collaborated effort to address the situation. She attributed the problem to lack of proper parental control of girls, broken homes, peer group influence, sexual promiscuity and teenage pregnancy and the premium parents place on boy-child education as against the girl-child. Mr Jasper Moayin Jato, District Chief Executive for Kpandai, also advised the students to be serious with their studies and lead lives worthy of emulation. He told the Union members to respect and recognize other ethnic groups in the Kpandai and East Gonja districts to ensure development. The DCE appealed to the people of Kpandai to remain patient and support the government to implement its programmes and projects and gave the assurance that the national cake would be evenly distributed.