Ghana National Gas Company has announced a reading project dubbed “Turn a Page”
At a press briefing in Takoradi, The Head of Corporate Communications, Ernest Owusu Bempah said the project, a corporate social responsibility is set to target twenty-seven to thirty thousand pupils from thirty basic schools from the Ellembelle District.
The “Turn a Page” project is a literacy project which aims to inculcate reading habit among school children between the ages of 6 to 15 years.
He said the project has become necessary following a research conducted by Ghana Education Service (GES) in 2012 which suggested that only 2% of children in primary two (2) can read proficiently while 50 percent of the pupils assessed could not pronounce a single English or Ghanaian word correctly, 44 percent could read without understanding what they read and 4 percent could read with some understanding.
Mr. Owusu Bempah noted that the project aims to close this gap and aligned with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 4.
He said it is worrying that most of the school-going children especially at the basic level are unable to read well, to understand and even spell words correctly. He said the company wants to see a literate community that can fill up more influential positions at Ghana Gas in the future, he stressed.
He said prior to the conception of the “Turn a Page” project, Ghana Gas has undertaken several educational projects namely – construction of a 4-unit teachers’ quarters at Anokye, Asemnda Suazo, an ultra-modern nursery facility in Asemnda Suazo and donation of educational materials to the Nzulezu Primary School by the Corporate Communication Department worth several thousand Ghana cedis.
Mr Owusu Bempah added that Ghana Gas is implementing social investment project across the sixteen (16) regions in Ghana of which majority of the projects focus on improvement in basic education which complements the key objective of “Turn a Page”.