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By Isaac Ato MENSAH
Accra – 8 April, 2019
Something very significant happened in the Jubilee House last month; the inauguration of the National Population Council (NPC).
Using the appropriate development communication tools such as public education through radio and TV, the NPC can reorient the nation’s thinking about population matters.
Dr Gladys Norley Ashitey, former deputy health minister and chairperson of the newly inaugurated 23-member NPC, responding to the president, said: ‘We are encouraged by the President’s vision to give Ghanaians a better life’.
And what did the president have for the NPC board?
‘I want to assure you of government’s support in this important task. It is a challenging one ahead of you and it is my expectation and hope that you will be up to it.’
He said the government’s strategic Coordinated Programme of Economic and Social Development Policies (CPESDP) had outlined clearly government’s proposed action on population and reproductive health.
The president added that the board ought to work to meet the targets in the CPESDP, which includes the reduction of the population growth from 2.2 per cent per annum to 1.5 per cent per annum to ensure the country realised its demographic dividend, according to a GNA story published on ghana.gov.gh on 15 March 2019.
The National Population Council Secretariat, located between the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Education in Accra, looks so run down and abandoned.
Maybe their work ended after the leadership of Prof Fred Torgbor Sai, who brought prominent national attention to population matters in the mid ‘90s.
In 1967, the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG), was introduced into Ghana by visionary medical professionals and seasoned educators – Dr. M.A. Barnor, Rosina Konuah, Nii Blebo Andrews and others. They worked hard at debunking our religion-based arguments about population and birth control.
But deep-seated religio-cultural myths remain.
A development communication approach to solving the population growth PROBLEM with its attendant illiteracy is to embark on a massive family planning campaign.
TV shows and advertisements should now idealise couples who have only one child or a no child family.
Indeed, advertising gives us something to aspire to.
At 30 million people (expected 2020 population census figure for Ghana), can Ghana drastically reduce its natural growth and begin to aspire to a developed world status?
Yes, we can, if we get the right EDUCATION, not schooling.
Moving forward, we must acknowledge that natural birth increase in Ghana’s population growth must be controlled.
Without that the nation cannot do effective planning and provide the requisite skills needed for national development.
What are the linkages between population growth, education and skills development?
Here are the harrowing statistics according to the Reform Secretariat of the MOE.
Basic proficiency in Primary Four Math is as follows:
2018; 22%
2013; 50%
Basic proficiency in Primary Four English Language:
2018; 37%
2013; 65%
WASSCE performance Grade A1 to C6 (pass category):
2018; 23%
2013; 50%
Ghana is now at par with The Sudan in terms of quality education. ‘Rwanda and Burundi have overtaken us…..Technical education has collapsed. You go to a technical school lab and only one student is standing there,’ lamented a high official of the MOE.
It is our considered view that public education through radio and TV, which together hold the largest audience in Ghana, will enable such serious issues, as raised in this publication, to come up for debate.
Outside the Radio Latenu 96.1MHz studio in 2016, Dr Ashitey Trebi Ollenu, the NASA robotics expert told me that on his way from the Accra airport to the Latenu studios, he sampled 10 radio stations on the car’s sound system – AND EACH ONE HAD A LOUD GOSPEL PREACHING AND PRAYER SESSION GOING ON! It was a hot weekday afternoon!!
In order to offer the right public education and receive meaningful feedback, our media owners and managers must clear their four-hour morning shows of the noise from political party hacks and rent seekers so that moderate, informed and learned voices can take over public business.
Do we not know that the media are a national resource for information, education and entertainment?
Imagine the benefits if each radio and TV station will devote a third of its space to public education!
For radio and TV stations, that means eight hours of solid programming devoted to development communication!
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