‘Pass Credit Union Bill’

Story: Fauziatu Adam
THE Ghana Co-operative Credit Unions Association Limited (CUA) has called on the government to pass into law the Credit Union Bill which has been on the waiting list for over 10 years.
CUA intends to introduce and implement the Deposit Guarantee Scheme for credit unions in the country and capitalise on Risk Management Programme and introduce at least two new products to meet the needs of members when the bill is passed into law.
The National Board Chairman of the CUA, Mr Cyprian Basing, made the call at a press conference organised by CUA in Accra.
He stated that last year the credit union provided loans of over GH¢160 million for business entrepreneurs, hawkers and small scale business enterprises across the country.
"It has also supported members to construct affordable houses, supported children’s education, contributed to the improvement of health of members and their families and supported community developments in their areas of operations," he added.
Mr Basing added that due to the nature of the union as co-operative (self-help) financial institution, NLCD 1968 Section 252 or any future co-operative Act and its contents would be relevant to CUA.
"The need to place these co-operative financial institutions under the Non-Banking Financial Institutions (NBFI) law came as a result of them being deposit-taking institutions,” he noted.
He, however, added that because of the peculiar nature of the law, and in order not for the law to undermine the co-operative principles which formed the basis of their operations, the credit unions initiated a draft bill and presented it  in 1998 through the Ministry of Finance to the then Attorney General for consideration.
Since then, Mr Basing added, the bill had been moving between the ministry and the Bank of Ghana.
The board chairman outlined that the bill, when passed into law, would not allow unscrupulous individuals to organise credit unions to achieve their selfish interests, adding that prudential laws and performance standards that were incorporated in the draft bill would assist unions to adhere to the best practices in the sector.
CUA was established in 1968 as the apex body of the credit union movement in the country and last year, it had about 550, 000 union members belonging to over 11,000 groups, in addition to 2,000 employees nation-wide.

2011 Home Economics Day celebrated

Story: Fauziatu Adam
A RENOWNED Ghanaian motivational speaker, Mr Emmanuel Dei Tumi, has called on the government to make the active involvement of the youth at all levels of decision and policy-making processes a priority, to enable the youth contribute effectively to national development.
"Today, evidence abound as to the enormous potential of the youth that could be harnessed for economic development of the country, but to do so will require a robust and complete paradigm shift that would usher in a new era of focused and very deliberate and strategic policy initiatives to appraise the active training and deployment of the youth for our national development," he added.
Mr Dei Tumi made this call at the celebration of the 2011 World Home Economics Day celebration in Accra dubbed "Harnessing the Energies of the Youth into Productive Ventures- the Role of the Home Economist".
The occasion, which was organised by the Ghana Home Economics Association (GHEA), brought together members of the association, teachers and students of home economics from some selected schools in Accra.
Mr Dei Tumi, who is also the founder of Future Leaders Group, said the future confronting the youth today could not be addressed with the same old traditional plans of thinking.
"They will require bold and out-of-box thinking and initiatives from the government and the citizenry to review, revamp, and align our educational curricula to include skills that are productively relevant to the needs of society and which has the capacity to guarantee the proper integration of our youth in today's challenging world," he added.
He said education was a process of teaching the youth how to think and not just the mere acquisition of knowledge.
"It should teach us how to develop our minds to bring fresh ideas to the discussion table to help solve old perennial problems of our days and not just memorise and strive to reproduce the ideas of others because they worked in the past," he noted.
He debunked the assertion that home economics was a preserve of the girl-child and it was there to prepare women for motherhood and homemaking.
"On the contrary, home economics offers broad spectrum of career opportunities both in public and private education, business, social service, journalism and institutional management. As various professional fields legitimise specific knowledge and talents, home economics students can also carve a place for themselves outside the domestic sphere," he stated.
The President of GHEA, Mrs Veronica Ama Jackson, observed that the number of male students offering home economics courses was not encouraging.
He noted that students with poor grades were pushed to offer the course which gave teachers a hard time trying to mould these students to make better grades.
She, therefore, called on Ghanaians to appreciate home economics as a course of study and desist form shunning away or discouraging their children form pursuing the course.
Most of the students who shared their views about the course called on GHEA to educate parents and teachers on the importance of home economics for them to appreciate the course for the development of the country.

Let's eschew religious intolerance

Fauziatu Adam,
Journalist

Freedom of worship in schools and institutions.
"Discrimination  against the holder of one faith means retaliatory discrimination against men of other faiths. The inevitable result of entering upon such a practice would be an abandonment of our real freedom of conscience and a revision to the dreadful conditions of religious dissension which in so many lands have proved fatal to true liberty, to true religion and to all advance in civilisation," Roosevelt's letter on religious liberty.
The importance of  religion in the development  of the student personality is underscored by an Act of Parliament which is generally known as the Education Act of 1961. Section 22 of the Act guarantees every pupil or student, freedom of worship and stipulates that no student should be denied admission to school on account of his religion.
The Act further states that unless a parent agrees, no pupil or student should either be made to attend, or forced or refrained from attending any form of religious gathering or worship, or be compelled to undergo any form of instruction in religious subjects.
But what do we see today in schools, especially in some of the renowned second-cycle institutions? Students are denied freedom of worship and even forced  to practise other religions against their will.
Let us cast our minds back to the unfortunate death of Master Mustapha Abdul Gafar, who was  allegedly abstaining from compulsory church service on March 16, 2008 on the campus of Adisadel College in Cape Coast.
 An educational  institution in the real sense is an environment which operates within the rules and regulations designed to inculcate in its students, the virtue of discipline, as well as respect for the authority of rule of law.
Again, I do not remember seeing any pouring of libation by a traditional ruler during the 53rd and 54th Independence Anniversary celebrations, and I remember the editor of the Insight newspaper, Mr Kwesi Pratt, raised that issue.
I do not think trying to solve this petty issue about our religious background  will promote the  peace we are enjoying as Ghanaians.
Our country, Ghana, does not belong to any one religion. It belongs to Ghanaians and Ghanaians should make sure that they live in peace.
 I understand that schools such as the Adisadel College and the rest were established by missionaries to promote the principles of Christianity in the then Gold Coast.
But come to think of it, Ghana has come a long way to promote democracy and there are rules and regulations governing every movement in the country, as stipulated in the 1992 Constitution.
Even though every student is guaranteed the freedom to worship as his or her faith stipulates, religious intolerance and conflicts leading to disruptions in academic work in the schools must not be tolerated.
People should realise that  times have changed and individuals have come to appreciate each other's ideologies and beliefs. The Government should  discipline offending heads of such institutions in order to bring the practice to an end.
The 1992 Constitution does not only guarantee freedom of worship but enjoins the state to actively integrate the Ghanaian society by avoiding discrimination or prejudices in matters such as ethnicity, gender and religion, then no one has any right to condemn or ‘ban’ the manifestations of the beliefs of other sects, let alone prescribe what should be done.
Let’s condemn any act of religious intolerance against any group, Muslim or non-Muslim in any educational institution, whether government, Islamic, mission or private.
I believe that education is the key to the empowerment of the human resources of this country. It is therefore the responsibility of all and sundry to ensure an unbiased and favourable  condition for all students, irrespective of gender, creed, religious or ethnicity to enable them pursue their academic dreams to the fullest without any fear.