New Edubiase (Ash), May 20, GNA - Mr William Adansi-Gyimah, Assemblyman for Apagya in the Adansi South District, has appealed to the Ghana Library Board, the Ghana Education Service and the District Assembly to stock the district library at New Edubiase with reading materials. This, he noted, would help the pupils and students use the facility to improve themselves verbally and in writing to improve on their academic performance. He also expressed the need for the establishment of an ICT unit attached to the library to help the students with the requisite knowledge as most books which the libraries lacked could be found on the Internet.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency at New Edubiase, Mr Adansi-Gyimah noted that libraries and ICT are fundamental to the teaching and learning processes at all levels of education and therefore stressed the need to resuscitate the facility to make them reflect the needs of modern society.

He said libraries encourage pupils and students as well as the youth and adults to cultivate and maintain the habit of reading and writing to improve upon their vocabulary. "Libraries are indeed a collection of books, newspapers, records and other materials that are valuable for learning to update the knowledge of pupils and students," he said. He attributed poor academic performance of some basic school pupils to lack of reading habits, truancy and teenage pregnancies and said this could also be attributed to the lack of libraries in schools. Mr Adansi-Gyimah appealed to teachers and parents to rekindle reading habits of their pupils and wards at school and home as a means of helping to express themselves, improve their creative abilities and imagination as well as broadening their horizon. The Assemblyman also appealed to the Ghana Book Development Board to resource the New Edubiase library and schools with varieties of reading books, magazines and other materials as a means of offering efficient service to the numerous patrons. 20 May 09