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The Minister designate for the Central Region, Mr George Kweku Ricketts-Hagan, on Wednesday declared his intention to seek affirmative action to increase the enrolment of indigenes of the region in the senior high schools there.

Answering questions during his vetting by the Appointments Committee of Parliament, Mr Ricketts-Hagan, currently the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry and a former Deputy Minister of Finance, said an affirmative action was necessary to ensure that the indigenes benefitted from good education from the many senior high schools in the region.

He was giving his assessment on education in the region and responding to a question by a member of the committee on whether he had found out why students from other regions were able to gain admission to the schools in the region, while only few indigenes gained places.

Reason for low school attendance

According to the nominee who is also the Member of Parliament for Cape Coast South, the situation had arisen because children in the region did not attend basic schools, citing poverty as one of the key reasons for the low enrolment at the basic level.

"The Central Region has some of the finest and the best secondary schools in the country. We have over 6,000 basic schools in the Central Region. We have over 90 senior high schools but a number of people in the region don't get to attend some of these schools and I think it is something we should work very hard at for the children of the Central Region to be able to attend especially some of the finest schools that we have in the country,” he said.

Mr Ricketts-Hagan said although the children had to qualify to attend the SHSs, "the basic education was not helping the kids to qualify to go to some of these fine institutions”.

He therefore said that as Regional Minister, he would make sure that the basic schools were well equipped for the children to be able to attend the schools.

Affirmative action

"This is going to be a long period and probably take about five years so I am looking at some kind of affirmative action that will help some of these schools to take some of the kids who necessarily have failed but who get close to the mark," he added.

He highlighted three areas of underdevelopment in the Central Region which needed improvement as the lack of tourism infrastructure, the lack of employment for the youth due to the absence of industries, and low level of education.

"Even though we have enough in education it is one area we can use in improving development in the region,” he stated.

Dagbon road map to peace

When he took his turn at the vetting, the Northern Regional Minister designate, Mr Abdallah Abubakari, told the committee that in handling conflicts in the region, he would ensure timely intervention to ensure conflicts did not escalate into violence. He said the Regional Security Council would put systems in place to put up red flags so that there would be quick intervention before the eruption of violence. They would also delve into the root causes of conflicts to understand them better and be able to deal with them, he said.

Making reference to the Dagbon conflict, he gave an assurance that “the eminent chiefs are doing an excellent work in resolving the conflict and I will offer whatever support I have to offer, to enable them to finish the road map that has already been designed and being implemented currently”.

Mr Abubakari said what he would do differently to solve the protracted conflict would be to provide information to the eminent chiefs for them to do away with some stakeholders who were not core members of the process, in order to avoid rioting by the youth.