Children of school going age to be off the street come September – Otiko

The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection is to embark on a project aimed at getting children of school going age off the street come September 2017.

The project dubbed, “Operation Street to Better Life” has been necessitated due to the increasing number of children who have abandoned the classrooms to make a living on the streets.

The project has also been necessitated based on findings and on recommendations made in a mapping and analysis of the Child Protection System Report on strengthening Child Family Welfare System.

According to the sector minister, Madam Otiko Afisa Djaba, a 2011 census on street children in the Greater Accra Region revealed that about 60,495 children lived and work on the street.

The census which was conducted by the Social Welfare Department of the Ministry revealed that 66 per cent of the children were migrants while 18 per cent were urban dwellers among other smaller groups.

The census also showed that there was a concentration of street children in the Accra Metropolis with approximately 50,000 children.

Madam Afisa Djaba noted that 1,757 children were found in the Ga East Municipal district, while 939 were in the Ga West Municipal with 5,768 representing Ashiaman and the remaining 2,031 coming from Nungua and Teshie respectively.

“Operation Street to Better Life”

Speaking on the project, Madam Afisa Djaba noted that “Come September, at least the children of school going age must be off the street, it is not only Ministry which is doing this, we are coordinating but the ownership must come from all of us including the parents”.

She said the current prevalence of street children in the country was extremely worrying and their increasing numbers is an indication of the weakened extended family values and governance systems which were increasingly unable to protect and provide for children and care for these very vulnerable people.

“As a Ministry we are focusing on the issue today because of the need to stop this harmful and hazardous practice that infringes on the right of the child to education, to play and to be protected from physical, mental and psychological abuse.”

Madam Afisa Djaba indicated that the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection understood that the dignity and full potential of any child, young person and persons with disability was under threat for as long as they continued to live and operate on the streets.

She added that “It is for this reason why we have developed a comprehensive document which will be the basis for the implementation of the programme we are calling “Operation Street to Better Life.”

She added that the project which would work under short, medium and long term strategies would link the extremely poor to pro-poor interventions like LEAP, the LEAP 1000 and the planting for food and jobs initiatives of the Akufo-Addo government.

“We will conduct a mapping exercise to collect data on street children in identified areas where streetism is a major concern, once identified, our teams will conduct several operations to systematically rescue them.

“We will have to keep on with the interaction and argument that Ghana, 60 years on we cannot afford to have people living on the streets, begging and selling,” she said.