Early marriage affecting girl-child education

Bole (N/R), July 7, GNA- Mr. Charles Mawuse, media coordinator of Ibis West Africa, a Danish International, non-governmental organisation (NGO), operating in Ghana has identified child betrothal, early marriage and child labour as the main problems confronting education of the girl-child in the Bole and Sawla-Tuna-Kalba districts. He said the people in those areas practiced these and other negative culture, which had harmful effects on formal education particularly that of the girl-child.

Mr. Mawuse, therefore, urged parents and other stakeholders in education to collaborate with traditional authorities to eliminate such practices.

He was speaking at Bole on Saturday when he inspected the Ibis Projects, under the NGO's education component in the Bole and the Sawla-Tuna-Kalba Districts.

Mr. Mawusi also used the opportunity to access the enrolment rate of schools in the area and to find out how the NGO could adopt measures to improve education particularly that of the girl-child. He said many communities in those areas lacked access to basic education and did not have female role models to motivate girls to go to school resulting in early marriages of girls.

Mr. Mawusi observed that of about 80 Brifo communities in the Sawla-Tuna-Kalba district, only 40 of them had access to basic education while children in the remaining 40 communities walked long distances to school, which could result in school dropout.

He said some of the schools in the two districts had no trained teachers while other schools were also using outdated textbooks and appealed to the Ghana Education Service to constantly monitor textbooks being used in the rural schools. Mr. Mawuse appealed to Parent-Teacher Associations, School Management Committees and Community Participation Committees to work together to improve education in the districts.

He said Ibis would continue to contribute to the development of education in the Northern part of Ghana.