Citizenship Week Celebration Extended To 992,789 School Pupils

Accra, July 9, GNA - The National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) through the 2018 Citizenship Week celebration, has reached pupils from 8,040 schools out of its targeted 10,000 schools.

As part of this year's celebration, which also coincided with the commission's 25th anniversary, started from May 28 to June 5; and June 11 to 29 July.

Mrs Joyce Afutu, NCCE Director of Public Affairs told the Ghana News Agency in an interview on Monday that the Commission, with the citizenship week celebrations, had reached out to 992,789 pupils this year.

She said the Commission had empowered the pupils and students on taxes and the environment, stressing that taxes build a great nation, it is well known that the infrastructural development of the country depended on taxes.

Mrs Afutu noted that the essence of the focus on the basic school pupils, was to inculcate the culture of paying tax into the students and the pupils at that young age for them to grow up to become responsible adults who will pay their tax voluntarily.

She said knowing that children are agents of change, 'we want to use them in our awareness creation campaigns so that they will in turn help us in educating their parents on the need to pay taxes.

'NCCE work in different thematic areas, some of which are democracy education, human rights, conflict transformation, women and children's rights among others and we use different strategies in addressing these areas.

'Looking at the citizenship week, it is part of our annual constitution week activities, which normally targets the adult population, but we decided to change the focus of the citizenship week, which started in 2012 to reach out to young citizens especially the youth to also work towards enhancing Ghana's democracy.

'We also have other strategies to reach the adult population through visits to churches, artisans, out of school youth and media house coverage'.

Mrs Afutu said the NCCE has a research department which monitors activities to see the celebration has made positive impact on the youth.

She said 'We also organise annual constitution week celebration and this year we did a lot of engagement with the security service the theme for the year was our nation our heritage: consolidating Ghana's democratic gears''. The focus was on transparency and accountability.

'We are running a four year programme with the European Union and the ARAP. As part of educating the citizens on anti-corruption. For this year the focus was on transparency and accountability'.

The first phase of the celebration this year was sponsored by Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and their partners. The European Union (EU) and the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are sponsoring the second phase of the celebration.

She explained that the EPA education seeks to inculcate the virtues of good citizenship in the people and one of them is protecting and safeguarding the environment.

Mrs Afutu said since it was the duty of citizens to keep the environment and community clean, the programme focused on sanitation as it has been a big issue in the country.