Assembly members should uphold children’s rights and welfare

Wa, Sept. 24, GNA – Mr. Israel Akrobortu, Acting Upper West Regional Director, Department of Children, has urged Assembly members in the region to lobby their respective District Assemblies to prioritize children issues in their development plans.

Children were the future leaders and should therefore be provided with all the necessary things that would enable them grow to become responsible in order to carry out that mandate of leadership.

Mr. Akrobortu said this at Wa during a one day capacity building workshop organised by the Department to sensitized members of the District Assemblies’ Social Services Sub-Committees on the implementation of the Children’s Act, (Act 560).

He said sub-part II of the Children’s Act (Act 560) pointed to the District Assembly as the responsible agency to protect children in its area of authority including protecting them from labour exploitation.

He suggested to the Assembly members to set up child panels to fight for the establishment of recreational facilities for children in their areas of authority as prescribed by Sections 27 and nine of the Children’s Act respectively.

Mr. Akrobortu said the workshop was necessary because it exposed the Assembly members to all the laws that mandated the Assemblies to protect children from all forms of abuse such as streetism, child labour, child migration and child trafficking among others.

Mr. Hamidu Haruna, Regional Director, Department of Social Welfare, took the participants through a presentation on the topic, “The Role of the District Assembly in Promoting the Rights and Welfare of Children”.

He said District Assemblies had a very important role to play in the welfare of children quoting Part II, Section 16 (1) of the Children’s Act which clearly spelt out the role of the Assemblies towards children’s welfare.

Some of these, Mr. Haruna said, included the setting up of child panels in the Assemblies, formulating bye-laws to protect children and prepare long term social development plans in the areas of education, health and social welfare to enable children develop to their fullest potentials.

He noted that successes had been chalked over the years in terms of bringing government closer to the people and encouraged local participation but added that much still needed to be done to make the system responsive and promote sustainable development.

“In line with this, if all Agencies, Departments, District Assemblies, the media, the police, the courts, NGOs, and the general public do not give the necessary cooperation, then child rights would be a joke and the Children’s Act for which a lot of investment was made would be a non-biting law left to gather dust on the shelves of history”, he stated