Stop using twins to beg for alms – Director

Leaders of faith-based organisations and community leaders have been urged to help discourage parents from using their twin children to beg for alms.

Mr Stephen Ofosu Darfour, Acting Ashanti Regional Director of the Department of Children, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, said the act, apart from violating the rights of the children, is also hazardous to their health.

These infants who needed a healthy environment to promote their physical and mental growth are normally brought to the roadside by their mothers to sit under the scorching sun and sometimes in filthy environment the whole day begging for alms.

Mr Daffour, who was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview in Kumasi on Friday, said the act, which was a negative socio-cultural practice, was illegal and must not be entertained.

“Despite strenuous efforts by the Department to get them off the streets, these mothers have remained obstinate because of the modest proceeds they obtain from ‘Good Samaritan by-passers,” he said.

The using of twins to solicit for alms is becoming a lucrative business for the people coming from certain parts of the country who uphold certain cultures and myths that twins need to be cared for from proceeds of charity in order to make their respective families prosperous.

However, some mothers in that business who asked not to be mentioned during an interview with the GNA rebutted this and said proceeds would be used to start their own businesses when they went back home.

“We are in Kumasi not for any other reason aside mobilising enough funds to serve as start-up capital for our own businesses when we go back home though our husbands are not in support of our living here,” they said.

Asked if the trade did not affect the children, they confirmed that their children often fell ill but they got them drugs from the drugstore to treat the ailments.