Need for Government to partner churches to improve on moral decay

Accra, March 01, GNA - Right-Reverend Dr Yaw Frimpong Manso, Moderator of the General Assembly of Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG) on Wednesday called on the Government to partner the churches to improve on the moral decay in the country especially among the youth. In addition, he appealed to Government to harness the expertise of Ghanaian Engineers to find alternative sources of energy by the use of local materials such as saw dust and waste plastic products for effective socio-economic and industrial development as well as domestic use.

Rt-Rev. Frimpong Manso made the call at a lecture organised by the Presbyterian Church of Ghana to commemorate Ghana's Golden Jubilee celebration in Accra.

It was on the theme "The role of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana to National Development - Pre and Post Independence Era." The Moderator of the General Assembly of PCG said the church had taken a serious interest in the celebration because, the church played a great role in the attainment of independence and continued to provide a holistic ministry in the areas of spirituality sound moral principles and social services for the effective and efficient development of the country.

He said the church had contributed to the human resource development by training people for leadership positions in the country including Heads of State and leaders in the civil service and other vital sectors of national development. Rt-Rev. Frimpong Manso said the challenges facing the church was the choice of either running its social institutions as either profit making or non profit making.

Others he said, were the deteriorating state of most of their institutions and schools in the country that required massive re-capitalization and new paradigm shift on the need to re-examine the issue as to whether the state should not handover the church's institutions and schools to them for effective management. "If this is done the churches could have full control over them and be able to instil full discipline into their institutional structures, 93he added.

Rt-Rev. Frimpong Manso on behalf of the church, commended the Executive and Parliament for passing the Domestic Violence Bill(DVB) into law. However, he said the important thing was for Ghanaians to sustain the society within the next 50 years with strict discipline, hard work, honesty and the fear of God.

Mr Stephen Asamoah-Boateng, Minister for Local Government, Rural Development and Environment in an address read on his behalf attributed Ghana's inability to achieve accelerated socio-economic development to lack of unity and collaboration due to leadership crises that had affected the country in the last few decades.

"As leaders whatever we do or say exerts a lot of influence on the masses therefore, we must always seek to exert the right kind of influence for the people to emulate," he added. Mr Asamoah-Boateng, noted that the history of Ghana's Independence and development could not be complete without the contributions of Presbyterian Church of Ghana to the social and economic enhancement of the country.

He said the church, since its establishment in 1828, had provided quality social infrastructure especially in the provision of schools, hospitals, clinics and agricultural stations that had uplifted the social status of most Ghanaians and also helped to improve the manpower base of the nation.

Mr Asamoah-Boateng regretted that most of the facilities bequeathed to the church by the missionaries had not been well maintained and called on the church to establish a business development unit to advise it on project management and implementation.

Rev. Dr Abraham Akrong, a Research Fellow at University of Ghana, Legon, said available evidence indicated that cocoa was first brought into the country by the Basel Missionaries and not Tetteh Quarshie. He called for more research into the issue to set the record straight.