Accra, Oct. 27, GNA - Mr. Alex Sefar Twefour, Director, Centre for National Culture (CNC) on Saturday called for the abolition of some cultural practices that discriminate and hinder progress in the country. "In certain tribes women are not allowed to own lands, irrespective of whether these women are capable of developing the land or not," he said.

Mr. Twefour was speaking at Annual Adinkra Durbar organised by Akuafo Hall Traditional Council of University of Ghana, Legon. "As a people we should occasionally evaluate some of our traditions and customs with the view to eliminate those customs that are outmoded," he noted.

He said culture establishes linkages with the positive aspects of our past and present, adding that it therefore embodies the attitude of our people to the interaction between traditional values and the demands of modern technology within the contemporary international culture. He said some culture permits a man to marry as many wives as he wants, but in the face of the present HIV/AIDS sickness, it was not advisable to encourage this practice, adding that, the more sexual partners one had the closer the one could be to the grave. "Some tribes also have a system of inheritance that allows a successor to inherit the wife or wives of a diseased person," he added. He said traditionally it was an abomination for young people to engage in sex before marriage but with the infiltration of other cultures people were engaging in sex "left and right at any age, anywhere and anyhow."

"The resultant problems are teenage pregnancy, production of bastards, unemployment and spreading of HIV/AIDS." Mr. Twefour advised Ghanaians to patronized their local dishes, adding that, it was unfortunate that some of the young people these days were falling over each other to buy some imported junk food. He called on the youth to recognise that their culture was the basis and the most important factor in the nation's human and material development.