'Work together with communities to tackle child protection issues' - NCCE

Augustine Bosrotsi, Deputy Eastern Regional Director of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), has tasked the Eastern Regional Child Protection Committee (ECPC) to work together with communities to tackle child protection issues.

He observed that for a holistic approach to child protection issues, the committee and all other stakeholders must come together and devise strategies to make the communities feel part of the processes and participate fully for results.

He mentioned community profiling and community action plans could be used as tools to design specific approaches and methods to tackle each community, on child protection, education and health needs.

The ECPC is made up of representatives from the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU), Departments of Social Welfare and Community Development, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), traditional authorities, Non-Governmental Organizations with focus on child development and the media under the auspices of the Department of Children under the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protectiion.

Nana Kwame Oppong Owusu, Chief of Jumapo in the New Juaben Traditional area and chairman of the ECPC, called on parents to take keen interest in the education of their children, especially, in this difficult times where children were made to learn from home.

He urged parents to ensure that their children took part in the online and television learning programmes at home to make up for the school contact hours missed due to the COVID-19 restrictions.

Mr Kwame Darteh, Eastern Regional Director of the Department of Children, disclosed that defilement cases in the region was on the increase but most were not reported and charged the committee members to be on the look out to ensure that perpetrators were brought to book. He appealed to the Ministry of Gender to ensure tha abused victims did not pay medical bills to encourage them to report such incidents other than settling them at home to avoid the monetary demands.

Ms Vera Allotey, Eastern Regional Director of Community Development, observed that some children did not partake in the just ended polio vaccination exercise due to some religious beliefs of parents and therefore wanted the ECPC to take it up to ensure that no child was left out in such health interventions.

She made a request for support from PLAN International Ghana to enable her outfit to train five officers across all 27 districts in the region, to sensitize communities on sexual abuses and child protection issues on the whole.