…. “Stroke Of My Pen” : Teshie Nungua Estates Library Cries For Rehabilitation

By Alex Blege

It is unfortunate to find out that the facilities that encourage the advancement of our communities, and inculcate good habits in us we do not seem to care about and we let our communities and ourselves down.
The above assertion occurs when perhaps the residents of a community do not have the feeling that they are stakeholders in the management of the facilities in their communities, but it is for the government and so it must be maintained by the government.
Teshie Nungua Estates was and still is one of the old residential areas in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. As a residential area, there was the need for the establishment of certain social amenities like schools, a police station, a post office and a community or children’s library.
The raison d’être of this article is to; discuss the need for the refurbishment of the children’s library that is now defunct and the structure serving as a place of abode for one squatter.
The library in question, begun in the residence of one Mr. Nelson Coffie, a lawyer. After some time Ghana Library Board now Ghana Library Authority came in to build a structure on a piece of land that is now opposite the offices of the Ledzokuku Krowor Municipal Assembly in the early 1990s which served the children in and around the estates.
There was a playground in front of the library and a summer hut by it. In short this was a recreational centre for children. Sadly, this recreational centre is now a place where the LEKMA keep stones, bitumen and Zoomlion bins.
The call for the refurbishment of the library in the Teshie Nungua Estates is indispensable to the cultivation for the love of reading among school children in the area and the municipality as a whole.
There are more ‘wee-smoking and selling joints’ in the Teshie Nungua Estates and the surrounding communities than libraries. How can children in this community get to be at the same level of mental understanding of issues in other parts of the world where there is the access to a library?


I am glad that the Graphic Communications Group Limited and some other media outlets are engaging children in spelling and essay writing competitions. It is a way of challenging children to spend time reading to sharpen their skills at expressing themselves in the English Language.
There is more to be done. We can ensure that our communities have children and community libraries where people can go and spend time to put their brains to work.
There have been calls for the cultivation of reading habits, in fact in an edition of the Daily Graphic last two years (Monday, August 13, 2012 page 56), ‘Cultivate habit of reading-Ashigbey’. These calls are good, however if our communities do not have the facilities to ensure that this habit is cultivated, the call for it comes to zilch.
The Teshie Nungua Estates Library is not the only one that needs a refurbishment but the library in the heart of the Teshie town also needs some refurbishment. This library has also served students, pupils and residents of that neighbourhood when it was functioning.
The nation and every concerned individual is complaining about how pupils and students are unable to perform excellently in final examinations every year, but we forget that there are things that need to be put in place that will ensure that this menace of abysmal performance of pupils and students in final examinations can come to an end.
Educational facilities such as a library no doubt play a lot of role in shaping the social, mental, physical and moral development of children who become those who take over from the older folks.
Community and children libraries are needed to encourage personal studies, research, analytical and critical thinking and reading habits. Since we are in a time where the axiom, ‘the world is a global village’ which is fast becoming a cliché, community and children libraries should have internet facilities, recreational facilities and a counseling centre where the challenges that confront young people can be addressed.
These libraries will also offer those children whose parents cannot afford to provide them reading materials to have access to the materials in the libraries. Refurbishment of these libraries will ensure some social justice.
I am appealing to the Ghana Library Authority, the Director of the Municipal Education Unit of the Ledzokuku Krowor Municipal Assembly, Ghana Writers Association, the Member of Parliament for the Ledzokuku Constituency, Mrs. Okity Duah, and other corporate bodies in and around Teshie and its environs to take a serious look and refurbish these libraries now.
These libraries are indispensable to the success of young people in our communities.

Alex Blege, kw.ameblege@hotmail.com/www.gudzetsekomla.blogspot.com