District Assemblies urged to train technical advisors

Saltpond (C/R), Jan. 16, GNA - Participants at a consultative meeting on preventing and combating child trafficking held at Saltpond on Thursday have suggested to the district Assembly to use part of its common fund to train local people to provide technical advice on how their people could promote their businesses.

The participants were of the view that promoting businesses would reduce poverty and attributed the high levels of poverty in the country to lack of technical expertise among the people on how to undertake a successful business.

The meeting was organised by International Organisation for Migration (IOM), a non-governmental organisation concerned with the liberation of children sent to Yeji and other fishing communities along the Volta Lake to do hazardous work at the expense of their education. The participants from Mfantseman, Awutu-Effutu-Senya and Gomoa Districts further called for the enactment of a law, which would compel a man to perform customary marriage rites on a woman he impregnated. This, they said, would make the man be committed to the upkeep of the child.

Mr Robert Quainoo-Arthur, the acting District Chief Executive (DCE) of Mfatseman, called on Ghanaians to detach themselves from the extended family system, saying economic factors had made its sustainability very difficult.

He appealed to school authorities to make school environment child friendly to make children stay as school.