A Deputy General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers, John Nyoagbe, has appealed to managers of education to be more sensitive to the plight of their workers and do all they could to alleviate their plight instead of compounding their problems. He said regional and district directors of education should not sit unconcerned when infractions such as non-payment of salaries were being committed against teachers. “These infractions against the hardworking and law-abiding members of the teaching profession should be immediately rectified if we want to be assured of teachers’ commitment to and co-operation in implementing the new educational reforms to start in September this year”, he added. Mr Nyoagbe was speaking at a workshop for teachers at Koforidua on Friday, May 25, 2007 and reiterated the position of the GNAT that, “every Ghanaian child is entitled to quality public basic education” and as a result “there should be no barriers whatsoever towards the attainment of that goal.” He appealed to government to ensure that its educational policies remove rather than widen the gap between rural and urban schools. Mr. Nyoagbe urged government to endeavour to ensure that benefits to education did not only reach the rich and urban pupils but also the poor disadvantaged pupils as well as pupils with special needs. Accordingly, he is appealing to government to provide resources “to leverage” rural children to empower them to use access to quality education as the key to open greater opportunities to them. Lady Helen Macdonald, a volunteer with the Canadian Teachers Federation(CTF) gave the assurance that the CTF shall continue to assist GNAT towards the attainment of the Dakar Declaration on education for all. That declaration, among others, challenges governments, the world over, to provide for their citizens a raft of education policies including ensuring gender parity in participation in basic education. The Deputy Eastern Regional Minister, Susana Mensah, who also addressed participants, said government was open to any advice that the leadership of GNAT offer on the implementation of the new educational reforms. Source: GNA