Gender Ministry launches operation get off the street for a better life

In order to rid the country’s streets and roadsides of hawkers and beggars, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection has launched a programme dubbed Operation Get off the Street for a Better Life.

Sector minister Otiko Afisa Djaba, who addressed the media, said the increasing number of persons on the streets is an indication of weak extended family values in Ghana.

Hawking and begging have become an increasing phenomenon in the cities especially, and, some other urban areas of Ghana. You see them everywhere. They keep chasing every car, every person on the corridors of the road, hoping that a charitable heart will do them the favour of dropping a coin or a cedi note in their palm for food.

To address the anathema that has found its place in the four corners of the country, Minister Otiko Djaba urged Ghanaians to first accept that governance structure and interventions so far implemented have failed to meet the needs of vulnerable people. She thus announced that, “Operation Get off the Street for a Better Life is not a one-off event, but, a process towards identifying the numbers of persons on the streets, profiling, integrating them with their parents, caregivers, and community.”

The target group includes kayayie (head-porters), hawkers, children who are beggars and those contracted to push disabled people in wheelchairs to ask for alms. Others are adult beggars, persons with disabilities, families in the streets, displaced persons (international migrants) and begging contractors.

The project has three phases: at the initial stage, there will be sensitisation of the public and the intended target group, as well as the mapping of hotspot areas and identification of shelters across the regions. The phase two will be a Remediation Package, by which street persons will be linked to such social protection interventions as LEAP, NHIS, and the Ghana School Feeding Programme.

The final part trains persons on the streets to take advantage of the government’s initiatives of One-Village, One-Dam; Reforestation; the Hospitality Industry; and Planting for Food and Jobs.

The Chief Director of the Gender Ministry, Kwesi Armo-Himbson, in an interview with TV Africa News, disclosed that over 600,000 people had been targeted within the next five years to be evacuated from roadsides.