Tongo (UE), April 16, GNA- Mr Linus Cofie Attey, Upper East Regional Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), on Tuesday expressed his concern about the spate of School lands encroachment in the Region. Mr Attey expressed the concern in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Tongo in the Talensi Nab-dam District at the opening of a two-day workshop on the new Educational Reforms organized by GNAT and sponsored by Action Aid International Ghana (AAIG). It was aimed at equipping teachers with skills and knowledge to enable them to confront the challenges facing the new Educational Reforms. He stated that many individuals and groups were not only encroaching on school lands but were actually taking over most of them.

He said if the situation was not addressed immediately, the development of educational infrastructure would be difficult, adding that, many school authorities in the region were battling with the land encroachers' daily. "If this phenomenon is not checked then our future would be bleak and the gab between our part of the country and the others would get wider", Mr Attey cautioned He said instead of the communities encouraging the building of schools for the education of their children, they were rather encroaching on the land available for such developments at the expense of their children education. He appealed to stakeholders in the educational sector, opinion leaders, traditional authorities, municipal and district assemblies and members of Parliament in the Region to intervene in the interest of the children's education.

In a speech read by the Deputy District Director of Education, Mr Paul Ayamga on behalf of the District Director of Education, entreated the over 100 participants to take the workshop seriously, since the success of the new Education Reforms depended very much on them. Mr Alhassan Sulemana, a Senior Programme Officer of AAIG said the education of children was one of his outfit's cardinal principles and that was why it had been supporting education for more than a decade, saying that, children were the future leaders and needed to be natured. He said education formed part of AAIG cooperate social responsibility and complements government efforts in addressing the challenges facing the sector, especially the reforms.