Ho, Oct. 4, GNA- The strategy of the Ghana Education Service (GES) to post Lady Teachers to rural areas as role models to young girls there

to encourage them to focus on education is being defeated by local men who hound the teachers for sex. Mr. Victor Mensah, Ho Municipal Director of the Ghana Education Service (GES) said this at the launch of communication materials to accelerate the promotion of girl's education in the Volta Region in Ho on Tuesday.

The national launch of the materials, made up of wall posters, flyers and stickers was held a fortnight ago.

Mr Mensah said he was currently handling petitions from lady teachers in the rural areas seeking transfers for alleged sexual harassment and called for a halt to such behaviour. Mr. Mensah suggested that socio-cultural notions that made parents more likely to send their boys and girls to school should be supplanted by "cogent alternative reasons" to convince parents that education was as important for girls as for boys.

He lamented the high drop out rate among girls in basic schools in the Ho Municipality and wondered what the situation was like in the more rural districts of the region.

Mr. Mensah called for a thorough appraisal of the roles of all stakeholders in promoting girls education with a view to increasing the pace of achieving the desired results.

Miss Charity Calai, Volta Regional Coordinator of Girl-Child Education said the gap between girls and boys in basic schools in the region had widened from 8,000 in 1999 to 13,000 this year. She called for assiduous efforts by the GES and other stakeholders to reverse the trend.

Mr. Samuel Gyang, Volta Regional Director of Education, who launched the materials regretted the high school drop-out rate in the South-Tongu, Ketu, Krachi, Nkwanta, Kadjebi and Jasikan districts of the region.

He therefore, called for more emphases on advocacy programmes to accelerate the enrolment of girls.

Mr Joseph Kwaku Nayan, Deputy Volta Regional Minster urged the district assemblies not to abandon the policy of picking brilliant girls for sponsorship.

He said government would continue to improve the service conditions of teachers to enable them deliver in the classrooms around the country.