RCC WORRIED ABOUT SEWING SCHOOL UNIFORMS IN ACCRA (PAGE 20, FEB 23, 2010)

THE Upper West Regional Co-ordinating Council (RCC) has expressed dissatisfaction with the manner in which contracts for the sewing of the free school uniforms were awarded in Accra.
It said there were equally good and qualified tailors and seamstresses in the region who could also do the job.
To this end, the Regional Minister, Mr Mahmud Khalid, gave a hint that the RCC would forward a strongly worded memorandum to the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to impress upon them to revise the policy of always awarding contracts in Accra.
Addressing a meeting of the RCC in Wa, Mr Khalid said, “This country was supposed to be decentralised about 20 years ago and therefore the practice where things were done elsewhere for the beneficiaries to be at the receiving end was unacceptable.”
“We have good tailors and seamstresses here who can equally do this job to create employment opportunities for our people,” he said.
On the number of districts which are to benefit from the free school uniforms and why those districts were selected as deprived, the regional minister was again not happy that the selection was done in Accra.
The districts are Nadowli, Jirapa and the Lambussie-Karni.
The Upper West Region is to benefit from 1,149 school uniforms, with each of the three selected districts receiving 383 pieces.
Touching on some of the school infrastructural projects the region stood to benefit, Mr Khalid said funds had already been released by the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETfund) for the upgrading of facilities in a number of Senior High Schools (SHS) in the region, including the Kaleo SHS, Wa Senior High/Technical and a proposed new SHS in the Wa East District.
He added that a new library complex for the region was also in the offing.
For his part, the Regional Director of Education, Mr Fabian Belieb, catalogued a number of interventions his outfit was initiating to improve on the quality of education in the region.
He said the region needed more teachers in the areas of mathematics, science and those with knowledge in Kindergarten methodology to give the children a very good foundation.
Mr Belieb also stressed a need for district assemblies in the region to institute incentive packages for teachers to entice and retain them in their respective communities, stressing that the districts should take a serious view about the teachers awards scheme.
That, he said, was imperative because many of the districts were not attaching special importance to the exercise.
On the performance of students in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), Mr Belieb expressed worry about the results of the last BECE in the region.
For that reason, he said henceforth, the office would institute a regional mock examination for all BECE candidates.
Mr Belieb also gave a hint of moves by his office to encourage reading and spelling among pupils and students, suggesting that Members of Parliament (MPs) must use part of their Common Fund to purchase reading materials for schools in their respective constituencies.