Under the Book Scheme for Basic Schools, the government has distributed over five million supplementary books and 440,000 atlases to 12,000 public basic schools throughout the country.

Mr. Rashid Bawa, Deputy Minister for Basic, Secondary and Girl-child Education, said this will boost the level of reading in schools and promised that the Ministry would make budgetary regular allocation for the purchase of supplementary reading material for pre-tertiary institutions.

This was contained in a speech read on his behalf at the Treasure Hunt prize giving ceremony in Accra last week, which was organised by Unimax, Macmillan, Alliance Francaise, British Council, Goethe Insitut and UNESCO.

He said under the scheme, primary schools were provided with 2 copies each of 50 titles for their libraries with 5% replacement of books per annum for the first five years of the programme implementation.

In 1998 for instance, the government through assistance from the British government's Department for International Development (DFID) purchased and distributed books throughout the country.

Mr. Bawa said, "reading culture or the interest and skills in obtaining information from books, the internet and related media, no doubt is seriously waning.

Video games coupled with countless programmes on both TV and radio are constantly waging a relentless war against the culture of reading. This sad situation must not be allowed to continue."

He hoped that encouraging the reading habit and interest in the use of libraries would go a long way in solving this problem.

Prof. Yoro Fall, UNESCO Representative in Ghana said books contribute a lot to human development, therefore UNESCO will continue to support reading and writing in Ghana.

He said the competition enables people from different backgrounds to share common views and called on the organizers to make it an annual programme to promote writing and reading in Ghana.

57 students were awarded meritorious and consolation prizes, including books, educational kits, free internet and library access, footballs, shirts and stickers