Madam Margaret Frimpong Agerakwa, DCE Francis Ankomah and the new and old classroom blocks
THE GHANA Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) says giving children education, especially the girl-child, in cocoa-growing areas remains a priority to the organisation like its commitment to maintain premium quality cocoa.
Margaret Frimpong Agerakwa, Deputy Ashanti Regional Manager in charge of Cocoa Health Extension Division, who stated this, said the commitment formed part of COCOBOD’s vision to fight all forms of child labour.
Madam Agerakwa disclosed that COCOBOD was working hard to get rid of any form of child labour. She made the disclosure when a six-unit classroom block at Akutreso, a farming community in the Adansi South District of the Ashanti Region, was being commissioned.
She said the agency had put in place various measures, including television and radio education, to address the phenomenon, and added that the construction of the school block was one of them.
“We are very much concerned about the future of Ghanaian children. Child labour used to be rampant in cocoa-growing areas, and in the past it was a big challenge to cocoa production, but it is no more. We put in place measures to curtail the phenomenon, and it is in this direction that COCOBOD envisaged the need to construct the school block,” she explained.
According to her, the physical structure would encourage the children to go to school and avoid truant behaviour since the school is now closer to the community.
The District Chief Executive of the area, Francis Ankomah, thanked COCOBOD for the school block and appealed to the agency to continuously assist cocoa farmers in rural communities and make them beneficiaries of its education scholarship schemes.
He also requested COCOBOD to construct the Tonkwase-Praho Road, which is one of the cocoa roads in the country.
From Ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi
pix saved as Mad. Margaret Frimpong in 2019