Tema, March 30, GNA - The Tema Metropolitan Office of the Social Welfare Department which is to provide support to the vulnerable in the area is itself vulnerable.

This has made the Department to function less efficiently because it lacks logistics.

The Department, which was established in the 1960s, is still operating from the old offices of the Tema Development Corporation which had in 2008 threatened to eject it and other 11 government establishments. Mr George De-Graft Assan, Tema Metropolitan Social Welfare Officer, told the Ghana News Agency in an interview on Tuesday that the Department was yet to receive any budgetary allocation from its Head Office for this year. Mr Assan said even though the Department was not an income-generating organization, it received no funds from the Government last year. He said there was no vehicle to transport the 10-member staff, four service personnel and 17 volunteers to the field for their monitoring work. Mr Assan said his outfit has the mandate to supervise the early childhood development centres in the Metropolis.

A total of 180 of the early childhood development centres in the metropolis had registered with the Department while 53 of them operating in the area are yet to register.

Mr Assan said employees, service personnel and volunteers sometimes used their own resources to move to day care centres to discharge their duties.

"The situation is sometimes so pathetic that the staffs contribute to take care of some vulnerable people who visit the office." He said Tema lacked a public orphanage, therefore, the Department was required to send missing children to the Osu Children's Home. Mr Assan said due to logistics constraint, his outfit had negotiated with the three private orphanages in the Metropolis, to accept such children at their own expense.