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Samira Bawumia, has urged Zongo chiefs and leaders to make education of their young ones a priority thus making them relevant in national development.

She said education and knowledge were the only virtues through which the Zongo communities could come out of poverty urging the leaders to be interested in the education of their children.

Mrs Bawumia said every job required some kind of knowledge and qualification and therefore without education, or learning, it would be difficult for people to get jobs as well as improve their wellbeing.

Mrs Bawumia was addressing the 5th annual conference of National Association of Zongo Chiefs (NAZAC) in Koforidua and noted that the NPP government would not forsake the Zongos thus the setting up of the zongo development fund among others.

The conference, which was attended by all Zongo chiefs from the 10 regions across the country to deliberate on issues affecting the zongo communities was on the theme “education, a tool for poverty alleviation in Zongo communities”.

The national President of the Zongo chiefs and Sarkin of Kumasi Zongo, Alhaji Sultan Omar Farouk Saeed, said the leaders of the zongo communities were committed to the advancement of their people through education and called on Muslim parents to educate their wards.

While commending government for recognising the need to improve the Zongos by creating a whole ministry for that, they also want government to pay some allowances to Zongo chiefs to enable them function well.

The New Juaben Municipal Chief Executive, Ms Comfort Asante, lauded the Zongo chiefs for recognising the need for education as a tool to turn around the fortunes of their people and called for more focus on the girls.

She urged them to take advantage of the free senior high school policy to reduce incidences of the early girl child marriages that was endemic in the Zongo communities adding that “once a girl was allowed to go to secondary school her marriage also delays”.