“The Church of Pentecost, by what it has done here [at Nsawam], has demonstrated exceptional leadership in its desire to maintain and grow a partnership with the state to address the problems of our nation.”
These were the words of the President of the Republic of Ghana, His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo when commissioning the Nsawam Reformation Prison Centre, at Ahodwo in the Nsawam-Adoagyiri Municipality last Saturday.
According to the President, the gesture by the church was “a very important example of the collaboration that the state seeks in this country, between government and several stakeholders that is, civil society organisations, faith-based organisations and independent institutions in our nation.”
In his address, President Akufo-Addo recalled the collaboration between the church and the state during the COVID-19 era, where the Pentecost Convention Centre (PCC), a state-of-the-art facility of The Church of Pentecost, was made available to the government as a quarantine centre for Covid patients, coupled with the distribution of food items by the church to the needy in various parts of the country.
He commended The Church of Pentecost for this exceptional initiative that helped save and solved the situation during that period.
“It shows the commitment of this church towards contributing to resolving the socio-economic problems of our nation,” he stated.
The President further iterated that the church’s prisons interventions are initiatives that will help develop the skills and talents of inmates of the country’s prisons, and provide educational opportunities for them, saying, “We know that today, the prison is not just a place of correction and punishment but it is meant to be a place of rehabilitation and reformation.”
He also stressed that congestion in prisons is one of the major burdens of prison administrations all over the world. He, therefore, said that to have a church put this as its priority to decongest and ease the accommodation of the prison is a major service to the nation.
The President of Ghana, however, hinted that the expansion of the Nsawam Medium Security Remand Prison by his administration was about 70 percent complete, and would be operational by the end of the year.
He called on various stakeholders and private agencies that have interest in the industrialisation of agriculture in the country to support the Ghana Prisons Service’s agriculture project.
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