BOOST FOR WA PRISON DISTANCE LEARNING PROGRAMME (PAGE 28)

Story: Chris Nunoo, Wa

THE Wa central prison have received teaching and learning materials from the President’s Special Initiative on Distance Learning (PSI-DL) secretariat, to start distance learning programme for inmates. This followed the selection of the prison as one of the learning centres for the open schooling in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), under the PSI-DL.
It would, among the teaching of other subjects like mathematics and English language, focus on bricklaying and catering.
The National Co-ordinator of the PSI-DL, Madam Abena Kwarteng, who donated the items at the launch of the PSI-DL for prison inmates in Wa in the Upper West Region, said the PSI-DL would build the intellectual capabilities of the prison inmates, as well as provide them with livelihood skills.
She mentioned the Nsawam Security Prisons, Kumasi and the Tamale Prisons as some of the learning centres for the TVET.
Madam Abena Kwarteng noted that apart from the television set and the DVD player, the government would also offer financial support for the purchase of tools and other equipments for the exercise.
She said the PSI-DL was part of effort by the government in finding solutions to the educational needs of people and to ensure that the country attained its target of “Education for all” under the millennium development goals (MDG).
To this end, Madam Abena Kwarteng said her outfit was liaising with churches, the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and NGOs to be able to create more learning centres to easily make the lessons on televisions and also on Video Compact Disc (VCD) accessible to all.
“The PSI-DL is targeting 1,000 needy poor and vulnerable students under the TVET pilot project”, she noted and said 11 study centres had so far been selected across the country for the project.
Madam Abena Kwarteng further assured the inmates that they would, after the course, receive the same certificate as those reading the same courses in classrooms.
This, she said, was because they would all be writing the same examination.
About 10 prisons officers are undergoing training to serve as facilitators for the project.
The Deputy Upper West Regional Minister, Mrs Winifred Dy-Yakah, who chaired the occasion, said the project would go a long way to improve the illiteracy situation in the country.
She advised prison inmates to take advantage of the PSI-DL because it would in the long run, unearth their potential.
Mrs Dy-Yankah further urged them on and told them not to see themselves as people who had been neglected by society.
For his part, the Upper West Regional Commander of the Ghana Prisons Service, Mr Joseph Kwaw Yankson, said the system would keep the inmates in touch with developments outside the prison walls in order to make them abreast of events.
He also expressed the hope that the PSI-DL would grow to have a positive impact on the inmates.