Mr Alikem Tamakloe, Acting Volta Regional Librarian, Friday attributed the poor academic performance in both first and second cycle schools in the country to the poor reading culture among pupils and students.

“To curb, if not eradicate completely this canker, pupils and students should be impressed upon to use their leisure time in reading,” he said.

Mr Tamakloe said this at an awards ceremony to crown this year’s celebration of the International Children’s Book Day at Peki-Blengo in the South-Dayi District of the Volta Region.

It was on theme: “Once Upon A Time, There Was a Story that the Whole World Told”.

Mr Tamakloe said: “The public library today has become a platform that is at the forefront of engendering education and development and therefore the country cannot afford to lose the potential of public libraries.”

He, therefore, appealed to institutions whose corporate social responsibilities include the promotion of education to extend such facilities to the Ghana Library Authority to enable it to bring effective and efficient services to the citizenry.

Mr John Yao Agbai, Headmaster of Peki Senior High School, lamented the poor spoken and written English among students and called on educational authorities to step up their supervision of teachers to enable them to impact positively on their students.

Ms Esther Akyea, Deputy Director in charge of Supervision and Monitoring at the South-Dayi District Directorate of the Ghana Education Service, reminded the pupils that knowledge was acquired through reading and advised them to use time used in playing video games and watching films to read so as to improve on their knowledge.

Ms Elizabeth Akyea of Government College of Education (GOVCO), Demonstration Junior High School, won a reading competition organized by the Ghana Library Authority for selected schools in the district, and was presented with a school bag, story books, exercise books, pens and pencils.

Mr Frank T.K. Dei, Director, Policy Planning, Budgeting, Monitoring and Evaluation at the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing, who chaired the function, donated 1,000 Ghana cedis to GOVCO Demonstration JHS for placing first in the reading competition.