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The Chief Executive Officer of Adwinsa Publication, Mr Kwaku Oppong-Amponsah, has called for a national day of reading, to encourage and educate children on the significance of reading books.
He said key stakeholders such as the President, Vice President, Speaker of Parliament, Chief Justice, among others, should visit schools to read their favourite books to children on that day.
Speaking at the Adwinsa Children Show 2024 on Saturday in Accra, themed “Poisoning our water, poisoning our future,” Mr Oppong-Amponsah said that reading gives children moral lessons, good grammar, and attitude to sit and pass exams.
He said the use of phones and gadgets was gradually fading out of the use of reading physical books, and advise parent to allow children read on these devices when the need arise.
He said the publishing industry had found ways of putting these books on websites for children to read them on their phones, which most children had also fail to read them online.
Mr Oppong-Amponsah said most often, there are children who may like reading but the parents fails to make books available to them.
“If you give a book to a child he or she will read but because we do not make the books available to them they do not develop the habit of reading.
Also due to economic reason, parent concentration are on textbooks that will assist their ward to write exams and pass,” he said.
Mr Oppong-Amponsah appealed to the government to scrap taxes imposed on books and imported papers to help the publishing industry reduce the cost on the product.
He said the industry players were still in talk with the relevant stakeholders to ensure that books becomes cheaper for parents to purchase for their children.
“Although the dollar rates and cost of electricity contribute to the cost of production, the taxes were their major concern and hope the government would lift those taxes,” he said.
The Executive Director of the Complementary Education Agency, Mrs Catherine Agyapomaa Appia-Pinkro, said children becomes intelligent when they inculcate the habit of reading at early age.
She therefore, advised parent to teach their children on the need to read books to help them acquire knowledge to achieve their dreams.
BY BERNARD BENGHAN
