Parents advised to spend quality time with children

Parents have been entreated to spend quality time with their children rather than solely committing their time to making money to help curb the vices in society.

Mrs Mercy Acquah-Hayford, the National Coordinator of International Network of Religious Leaders Living with or Personally Affected by HIV/AIDS (INERELA+) Ghana, made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency at a forum to climax the 16-day Advocacy to end violence against women and girls on the theme: “Advocacy on Sexual and Gender Based Violence".

Mrs Acquah-Hayford said it was not beneficial for parents to make money at the expense of their children, adding that the future of the country depended on the care given to the present generation.

“We want parents to get closer to their children and bring them to themselves. We want parents to stop chasing money and wealth and look at the future generation that we have brought into the system because you can get all the money, you can build all the nice houses but if your child becomes wayward then where are we going?

“Lack of parental care is one of the contributing factors leading to increase in social vices amongst the youth,’’ she said.

The stakeholder’s forum was attended by clinical psychologists, religious and community leaders, legal practitioners, government agencies, health workers, Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service, and the media to deliberate on measures to help curb the menace.

(INERELA+) Ghana is a faith based organisation actively involved in reducing the spread and impact of HIV/AIDS among religious leaders and their congregations.

It also targets lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender/transsexuals among others who live with HIV/AIDS.

Mrs Acquah-Hayford said the organisation’s encounter with the communities in Accra including Nima and Mamobi, showed that a lot of male children were getting into homosexuality, which could be largely blamed on parental negligence.

She, therefore, urged parents to be sociable to their children to encourage free flow of information adding that unfriendly parents sometimes make their children to become rebellious and keep matters for themselves.

The stakeholders, after a fruitful discussion, developed an action plan to help salvage the situation of gender-based violence.

The Action Plan is to intensify community and school outreach, provide counselling for victims of violence, give biblical sermons in churches, host sensitisation programmes as well as support victims of gender-based violence.

Mrs Yaa Fosuah Asare, a Legal Practitioner, called for a nationalistic approach to solving the issue of sexual and gender-based violence.

The 16-day Activism Against Gender-Based Violence Campaign is marked globally between November and December, every year, to raise awareness about violence inflicted on women and girls across the world.