Accra, Aug.17, GNA - Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, the Minister of Education, on Tuesday stressed the need to create substantial human and financial resource to implement the National Functional Literacy Programme (NFLP).

He said it was necessary because of its positive impact on the country's socio-economic and political development.

Mr Tettey-Enyo made the call when launching the 2010 International Literacy Day Celebration in Accra.

It is under the theme: "Functional Literacy- A Key to Job Creation and Poverty Reduction".

He said targets of NFLP were located in difficult-to-reach rural areas where all kinds of challenges militated against enrolment of children in formal school over the years.

He said the unbearable long distances of formal schools in the rural communities and the need for children to contribute to family survival and other cultural attitudes often led to their denial of access and high drop-out rates, with girls being the most affected.

"All these factors make access to basic education a real challenge to majority of the Ghanaian youth in these deprived areas and ultimately to the high number of adult illiteracy in the country," he added.

Mr Tettey-Enyo explained that NFLP, conducted by the Non-Formal Education Division (NFED) of the Ministry, was to increase the number of functionally literates in the country and increase the resourcefulness of these unfortunate non-literates through skills and knowledge.

He said positive feedback was received on the usefulness of the NFLP in improving the livelihood of learners and 97 per cent of the learners showed that skills and knowledge gained by the NFLP helped improve their living standards.

Mr Charles Darlington Afare, the Acting Director of NFED, said several strategies implemented included formal schooling for majority of children who were unable to attend school and complementary education for children who lived in remote areas or for some economic reasons could not attend the formal school system.

"Non-Formal Education programmes especially functional literacy for adults aged between 15-45 years who neither had the chance to attend school nor who had relapsed into illiteracy since leaving school," he said.

Mr Afare said the strategies put in place by NFED had empowered beneficiaries and most learners had increased their income level through the acquisition of occupational knowledge and skills.

He said majority of the underprivileged segments identified were the youth, women and rural dwellers who either depended on second-hand information that might be contaminated or diluted depending on the source.

Mr Afare called on all literacy advocates, practitioners and stakeholders to join the NFED to celebrate this year's International Literacy Week.

He appealed to both the public and private sectors to support the national literacy drive by creating an enabling environment for new-literates of the programme to function and play a more meaningful role in national development.