Ministry considers legal action against parents

Ashaiman, March 18, GNA - The Ministry of Manpower Development and Employment (MMDE) is considering legal action against parents of street children as a measure to curb the phenomenon.

Mr Yaw Barimah, Minister of Manpower Development and Employment, who announced this said the new measure had become necessary since some parents still refused to accept their responsibility to take care of their children till they reached a stage where they could take care of themselves.

This was contained in an address read for him by Mrs Mary Amadu, Director of Social Welfare, at the graduation ceremony of 21 beneficiaries of the Street Children Component of the Community-Based Poverty Reduction Project, at Ashaiman on Wednesday.

The children were trained in skills like shoemaking, photography, electronics, pottery, dressmaking and auto mechanics.

The project under the auspices of the MMDE is being funded under the World Bank's Learning and Innovation Loan Facility.

The Minister advised parents to make sure they took full responsibility for their children's care by educating them and catering for their needs so that they could also be assured of a secure future. He said the problem of the phenomenon of streetism had been of great concern to the government since the future of the country lied on the kind of training and preparation given to the children when they were young.

He said the Ministry had contracted a loan of 2.3 million dollars from the World Bank Learning and Innovative Loan to see how best it could integrate these street children into the mainstream of society. The Ministry, however, in collaboration with districts and other service providers including Family Health Foundation (FHF), a Non-Governmental Organisation on street children was targeting 2,500 children with various forms of interventions.

The Executive Director of FHF, Mrs Jane Mansa Okrah, in her welcoming address said the project which started in February, 2003, currently had 97 children with 54 of them receiving training in various skills like dressmaking, electronics, photography, auto spraying, hairdressing, tailoring and fitting while the rest were re-enrolled in schools.

She expressed satisfaction that the children who sometime ago had no shelter, food and a hope for the future could now be relied on to make significant contributions to national development. The Chairman for the occasion, Cdr. (Rtd.) Atta Adomako, who is also Chairman of the Ashaiman Zonal Council, expressed regret about the bad perception people had about Ashaiman, that "the place is full of criminal activities."

He expressed the hope that the training programme would help reduce the poverty level in the area and change people's perception as well. He advised the graduates to make use of whatever skills they had acquired through the programme so that money spent on them would not be wasted.

All the graduates were presented with certificates and a working package each to enable them to start life. The only hairdresser among them was presented with one hair dryer.