Official unhappy about low patronage of STEP in C/R

Cape Coast, Feb. 20, GNA - The Central Regional Director of the Department of Social Welfare, Mr Stephen Adongo, on Friday expressed concern about the low patronage of the Skill Training for Employable Programme (STEP), launched nationwide two years ago.

He said the Department had so far registered only 54 of the targeted first batch of 75 trainees.

Mr Adongo said this when he opened a three-day capacity building workshop for executive members of the Abura-Asebu-Kwamankese and Cape Coast District branches of the Ghana Society of the Physically Disabled, at Cape Coast.

He said the training, which lasts between three and twelve months, involved training in batik and tie-dye, soap production, food processing and dressmaking and advised unemployed disabled persons to take advantage of the opportunity to live decently and refrain from begging.

Mr Adongo gave the assurance that the Department was working with the Association to ensure the enactment of a Bill on the Disabled. The National President of the Association, Mr Christopher Kisseih, expressed regret that the poverty reduction strategy did not give priority attention to the disabled and urged district assemblies to address the anomaly.

He appealed to disabled persons to plan their families and to ensure that their children were educated.

Mr Ransford Mensah, Regional Chairman of the Association, stressed the need for society to eliminate barriers making life unbearable for the disabled and advised them to acquire skills to generate income. The participants expressed concern about the location and structure of the Social Welfare office building located on a hill in Cape Coast, which they said was inaccessible to them because of their disabilities.