East Gonja District Assembly to embark on anti-child trafficking campaign

Salaga (NR), May 14, GNA - The Women and Children Committee of the East Gonja District Assembly, is to undertake a sensitization programme in the district to educate parents on the need to protect and prevent their children from all forms of child molestation and trafficking. Madam Paulina Atta, Presiding Member of the Assembly, who announced this in Salaga said an orientation programme would therefore be organized for members of the Committee to effectively carry out the programme. Speaking on Tuesday during the first ordinary sitting of the Assembly for 2010, she said when well schooled, Committee members would work to ensure that child trafficking especially along the fishing communities was stopped.

Madam Atta said child trafficking and labour and other forms of child molestation, were still rife in the northern regions and attributed the problem to inadequate education and expressed the hope that the Assembly would not relent in its efforts to help address the problem. She said the district would also embark on a campaign to encourage women to contest for this year's Unit Committee and Assembly elections by profiling women, who were interested to contest. Mr Alhassan Mumuni, the District Chief Executive for the area in an address decried the low internally generated revenue performance of the Assembly. He said though the Assembly exceeded its target by 56 per cent, the fact remained that in the absence of rates collected from mobile communication companies, the district would perform poorly and stressed the need for the Assembly to adopt a more pragmatic ways of mobilizing funds internally. He said government had introduced new modules into the National Youth Employment Programme and announced that some 40 youths had been recruited into the Eco-brigade to clear weeds along the banks of the Volta Lake and also to assist to save lives of accident victims. Mr Mumuni said some 120 youths would also be employed into the afforestation programme to work in about 120 hectares of land in three communities. He also advised members of the various communities to take sanitation seriously to prevent outbreak of communicable diseases.