More students getting involved in drug abuse issues in Wa – NYA
A research conducted in the Wa Municipality in the Upper West Region recently by the National Youth Authority (NYA) showed that about 68 per cent of the student population in the Municipality have ever been involved in a drug-related issue.
“This has become a frightening phenomenon which should be the concern and priority for all citizens who care about the development of the youth and the nation’s future”, Mr. Gbenya Worlanyo Besa, an official of the NYA in the Region said at Wa.
He called for the establishment of correctional centres across the country which may not take the form of detention institutes but rather well resourced and enhanced desks in schools, health centres and youth organizations to prevent and reduce drug abuse.
Mr. Besa was speaking at a workshop on drug abuse organized by the National Commission on Civic Education (NCCE) with support from the German Embassy.
The workshops which are being organized through out the country are a prelude to leadership training camps which would begin by the end of this month for youth leaders from 20 selected districts where the production, sale, use and trafficking of drugs such as marijuana (Indian hemp) are carried out in a wide scale.
In the Upper West Region, 20 participants who attended the workshop came from the Wa municipality and Sissala West district.
Mr. Besa said drug and substance abuse should be recognized as key social and economic challenge which directly affect the development of quality human resource base, quality delivery of health services and the level of the nation’s human security.
Mr. Samuel Akuamoah, Director of Programmes of the NCCE said the country had been divided into four zones comprising Northern, middle, eastern and western zones for the leadership training camps.
He said during the camps, people who had abused illicit drugs would be invited to share their experiences with participants, while films on the menace of drugs would also be shown.
He said during the schools’ Project Citizen any time the students were asked to identify a problem in their communities almost all of them came out with drug abuse as the key problem.
This, he said, prompted Mrs. Charlotte Osei, the Chairperson of the Commission to source funds from the German Embassy to embark on the education programme to reduce and prevent the production, use, abuse and trafficking of illicit drugs in the country.
Source: GNA