Training for beggars starts in March

About 340 beggars registered on the streets of the Accra-Tema Metropolis are to be given free technical and vocational skills training from March.

Mr Sampson Adjei, a Senior Social Development Officer of the Department of Social Welfare, said the programme formed part of government's effort to rid the streets of beggars by giving them skills that would enable them to live a meaningful and an independent life.

He said those registered were aged between 20 and 45 years. They would be given free hostel facilities, feeding, medical care and other basic facilities. Mr Adjei said the social menace being portrayed everyday on the streets of Accra and other parts of the country by beggars was creating a lot of problem to the Ministry in its vision to cater for all human resources.

He said the Somanya Rehabilitation Centre in the Eastern Region and the Edwenase Centre in the Ashanti Region had been selected as the centres for training in vocations such as carpentry, shoemaking, dressmaking and tailoring.

Mr Adjei said though begging for alms on the streets was illegal under the NLC Decree 392; the Ministry was not looking at the problem from the legal point of view but from the humanitarian position.

He expressed the hope that the programme would be successful because some of the beggars registered voluntarily and a Beggars' Rehabilitation Fund had been created.

Mr Adjei appealed to the public, especially non-governmental organisations that were concerned with the plight of the socially disadvantaged, to see this move of the Ministry as a step in the right direction by liasing with it or donating to the fund.