By: Saaka Alhassan; Yong-Dakpem-Yili

The Northern Ghana Director for eSyllabus for Africa, Crispin Wura-Sey Zeikah has attributed the upsurge of cases of conflicts, cholera, malaria as well as poor sanitation and poverty in the Ghanaian society to the low literacy levels of the citizenry.

According to him, reading competence is linked-up to high priority issues such as the economy, Health, sanitation, Agriculture, Food security and peace which are pillars affecting the development of societies across the world.

Speaking in an interview with Fiila News at St Theresa R/C primary school in Yong-Dakpem-Yili during a follow-up to a workshop organized for some selected teachers in the Tamale Metropolis to enhance and improve reading habits and literacy levels among school pupils, Crispin Wura-Sey Zeikah explained that people are able to understands issues of malaria, cholera and among others when they are literally sound.

He further explained that the stability of a community depends mostly on the level of literacy of the people in that community.

He believes that improving literacy or inculcating good reading habits among children will help reduce some of the preventable diseases such as cholera, malaria, malnutrition and their associated challenges in the country.

There is a general observation that reading is a major challenge for children in most basic schools across the country.

As a result, eSyllabus for Africa, a Non-Governmental Organization operating in the African sub-region, recently organized a training programme dubbed: "Functional Literacy Improvement Programme", for teachers to improve their skills on how to effectively inculcate and improve upon reading habits especially among basic school children through the capacity building of teachers and other necessary stakeholders in the literacy value chain.

Beneficiary schools were supposed to develop an action plan on how to improve literacy among pupils in their schools by ensuring that their classrooms were literacy friendly.

The Northern Ghana Director for eSyllabus for Africa however encouraged teachers to take very key interest in the literacy programme since literacy is one of the key foundation of education.

John Bosco Moar, Head Teacher of St Theresa R/C primary school in Yong-Dakpem-Yili was optimistic that with the training programme and the action plan reading competence of the pupils will be improved.

He commended eSyllabus for Africa for the giant step in helping to solve an age-long problem. He attributed the poor reading habits among pupils to the upbringing of the children from the homes and called for a collaborated efforts to help deal with the people.

Mr. John Bosco therefore pledged his commitment to ensure the effective and efficient implementation of the Functional Literacy Improvement Programme.