Tamale, June 8, GNA - Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Communication at the weekend said the NDC government was committed to closing the historical education parity gap between the north and the south. "It is not the fault of any government that the north lagged behind in education and if this government starts the process of closing the historical parity gap no one should read meaning into it," he said. Mr. Haruna who said this during the Speech and Prize Giving Day of the Tamale Girls' Senior High School, indicated that, the north was not short of role models, and stressed the need for teachers to withstand all forms of challenges and train children to become useful tools to help in the country's growth.

The occasion was on the theme: "Educating the Girl-Child, a Tool for National Development", and was also meant to showcase the potentials and the full existence of the first ever public girls' school in the Northern Region and to show appreciation to the GETFund for the enormous assistance for infrastructure development in the school's new site. He said it was important for children to live with a simple definition of their aims and objectives, to keep their dreams high, so that they become role models in future. He stressed the importance of girls' education saying, "If we want to achieve improvement in infant and maternal mortality in the Northern Region then there is the need for us to pay more attention to girls' education, which would reverse the trend."

Mr. Sam Garba, Administrator of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) attributed the high incidence of infant and maternal mortality in the Northern Region to high birth rates of women. He said while women in the south restricted their birth rates to about two to four, those in the north give birth to about seven to eight, whiles others had no restriction at all, a situation he said, if not checked and corrected the infant and maternal mortality rate would continue to increase unabated. Mr. Garba has, therefore called for the need to properly educate the girl-child who would become responsible parents and could control and pace their children to reduce the rate of infant and maternal mortality in the Region.

Mr. Tetteh Enyo, Minister of Education in a speech read on his behalf reiterated government's commitment to pay more attention to girls' education to close the education gap between the girls and boys. He therefore advised parents to take advantage of the preschool education to enrol their girl children in school at the right age, and should take measures to support them to complete school. He warned that any teacher who would sexually harass a girl in school would be severely dealt with, adding that it was unprofessional for teachers to date girls on campus.