Sekondi, June 5, GNA - Mrs Elizabeth Abena Nkrumah, Western Regional Director of the Social Investment Fund (SIF), has stressed the need to promote the use of Biogas for domestic purposes. She said the rising cost of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) made it more important to explore and encourage the use of Biogas, which was less expensive and easy to use.

Mrs Nkrumah said these at a consultative meeting in Sekondi on Friday, to review the second phase of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS), which becomes operational in January 2006.

She said without an alternative to LPG, many Ghanaians would revert to charcoal and firewood for cooking to the detriment of the environment. Mrs Nkrumah said the development, patronage and use of Biogas should be given special attention and incorporated into the new GPRS to ease the burden of Ghanaians.

She said there was the need to develop storage facilities for Biogas to enable more people to use it.

Mrs Nkrumah said the SIF was negotiating to include water-harvesting technologies in all school buildings, while efforts were also underway to use portions of new school buildings and parks for social and community activities, to raise funds for the rehabilitation of the school blocks.

Efo Kwodjo Mawugbe, Western Regional Director of the National Commission on Culture (NCC), said textbooks being used in schools should be written in the Ghanaian context to enable school children to accept and use locally made goods and services in future. He said the continued use of foreign fruit identifications in the early childhood development centres made children to denounce local products for foreign ones.

Efo Mawugbe stressed that family planning methods should also be explained in the Ghanaian context and education on such initiatives incorporated in the daily lives of the people. 06 June 05