Bolgatanga, Sept 4, GNA - Churches in Ghana were on Friday asked to eschew all negative tendencies and bad habits that tend to be destructive, and rather use the complementary role they play in development to cultivate good virtues.

Mrs Lucy Awuni, Upper East Deputy Regional Minister, said this on Friday, during the opening Ceremony of the 52nd National Delegates Conference of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana Choirs Union (PCGCU), on the theme, "Empowered by the holy Spirit - The Gift of Singing". The Deputy Minister said the choir unions not only sung with one voice to promote contacts, unity, brotherliness, and raise moral standards in the Presbyterian church of Ghana, but also promoted virtues that the nation needed to move in the right direction. She enumerated the complementary role the Presbyterian Church played in the nation, notably, in the fields of agriculture, health and education.

She said the church had broken the myth that, disability is not an inability and the proof of that, was the Community Rehabilitations Centres in Garu and Sandema, where the blind and the lame are able to farm and undertake income earning ventures.

Mrs Awuni said the Government's Manifesto of a "Better Ghana Agenda", sought to empower Ghanaians by revamping the industrial sector as a whole and the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) sub-sector in particular.

She said under this Agenda, the government had specified some areas on the basis of their employment generation potentials; positive linkages with other sectors of the economy and value addition potential for growth and profitability.

Madam Lucy Awuni urged the delegates to not only concern themselves with spiritual things but to take advantage of all the opportunities under the Manifesto to develop themselves.

She reminded delegates of the forthcoming National Population Census and threw the challenge to women to show active interest in the District Assembly Elections due in October this year. The conference brought together 1,276 delegates from the 470 presbytery branches in the country, to take stock and evaluate their activities over the year, collect affiliation fees and raise funds for their activities.

The Union President, Dr Daniel Okae-Anti said some of the challenges the union faced were indiscipline, lack of choir masters and funding.

He asked choristers to direct their efforts towards self- financing, through sustainable projects, build their capacity and unearth the musical talents of the individual chorister and strive to develop their spirituality. 4 Sept. 10