MOWAC to initiate educational programmes

Daily Graphic, Pg 11. Thurs. May 14/09

Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

THE Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC) is to embark on sustained educational programmes to sensitise parents to the provision of various acts and policies that protect the rights of children in the country.
According to the sector minister, Ms Akua Sena Dansua, the programme was geared towards addressing the menace of irresponsible parenting in the country, which she said was the major cause of the numerous anti-social vices bedevilling the youth.
Ms Dansua, who made the statement when she addressed the Meet-the-Press series organised by the Ministry of Information on Tuesday, said most parents were unaware of the provisions in the Children’s Act, the Domestic Violence Act and other international laws and treaties that protect children.
According to her, the ministry would compliment its educational efforts by ensuring that such laws were enforced to the letter to prosecute parents who neglected their children.
She said many of the country’s youth were engaged in such vices as prostitution, fraud, streetism, truancy, child delinquency, pornography and migration because they had been neglected and also lacked parental control.
Ms Dansua however acknowledged that the ministry alone could not tackle the problem and called for close collaboration between the ministry and related bodies and organisations, and also urged parents and guardians to be more responsive to the needs of their wards.
She said the ministry would work in conjunction with the Greater Accra Regional Minister to ensure that brothels located in areas such as the Malam Atta Market, Agbobgloshie and the Mantse Agboana, and especially ‘Soldier Bar’, at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, were closed down.
Touching on the way forward, Ms Dansua said that in collaboration with relevant organisations, the ministry would provide micro-credit assistance to support community- based projects to enable parents to earn incomes and thereby cater for their wards.
She said “it is our firm belief that as a nation our quest for accelerated socio-economic development, wealth creation and poverty reduction will be seriously hampered without the involvement and empowerment of women, especially the rural and urban poor”.
Touching on the issue of ‘kayayei’ (female pottering), the Deputy Minister for MOWAC, Hajia Gariba Bora, called on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the urban centres to extend training programmes for ‘kayayei’ to the communities in the three northern regions to curb the migration of young girls to Accra and other major cities.
According to her, when the female potters were trained in Accra and reintegrated in their communities, it rather enticed more girls to come to the south.
She said when the training took place in the rural areas, most of the girls who were in the big cities would prefer to go back when they saw that their relatives back home were doing better than them.