THE Administrator of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), Mr Sam Garba, has entreated the elite in northern Ghana to help evolve effective strategies to commit more resources towards the education of the girl-child.
He noted that the alarming rate at which girls engaged in menial jobs in southern Ghana demanded that urgent and concrete steps were taken to arrest the situation.
Mr Garba told students of the Tamale Senior High School at the weekend that “my heart bleeds anytime I see young girls from the north engaging in the ‘kayayo’ business with its attendant problems like teenage pregnancy”.
He equally attributed the high maternal and infant mortality rates in northern Ghana, partly to the high illiteracy rates among women as a result of the failure of stakeholders to send girls to school.
According to him, the plight of women in the northern part of the country might worsen if the elite did not tackle the problem urgently to ensure that streetism and the kayayo business among the girls became a thing of the past.
The Minister of Communications, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, observed that northern Ghana was not “short of role models”, and entreated girls to keep their dreams high and alive so that they could become responsible women in the future.
Mr Iddrisu, who is also the Member of Parliament for Tamale South, indicated that stakeholders must help close the historical gaps and disparities that existed between the north and the south in terms of quality education.
As his contribution to the development of girls’ education, the minister made a personal pledge ofGH¢2,000 as seed money towards the establishment of the Pang-naa Girl-Child Education Fund.
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