Girls Education in Danger....

Wa, Sept.18, GNA – Girls’ education at Jongo-Tabiasi, a community in the Wa Municipality is in danger due to some traditional beliefs and practices of the people.

Findings by the Child Protection Programme, a UNICEF- assisted intervention undertaken by Community Development and Social Welfare Departments have revealed that members of the community believe that it is a taboo for a girl to cater for her aged parents.

Any girl who risks taking care of her aged parents would be destined to die and as a result parents do not see the essence of educating them.

This was made known at a stakeholders’ sensitisation seminar in Wa at the weekend, to review UNICEF’s assisted projects and programmes in the Upper West Region.

The findings also advocated stiffer sanctions on commercial drivers who helped to traffic children to urban centres and illegal mining spots to help deter the practice.

The two departments called for the establishment of Births and Deaths offices in the hospitals to help reduce the burden on parents who go to the law courts to swear affidavits before they could get their children registered later.

Alhaji Issahaque Salia, Regional Minister, commended UNICEF for contributing towards the realisation of key millennium development goals in the country.

He said UNICEF had made huge investment in the provision of health facilities, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene, child protection and education as well as means of transportation to the Region, which had helped to address some of the many social development challenges of the communities.

He noted that issues of water, sanitation, hygiene, child protection, girl- child education and health as well as child trafficking and migration, elopement and child marriages are among the very core of the Region’ developmental endeavour.

Alhaji Salia therefore asked the district assemblies to develop strategies to integrate these challenges into their development plans.

He called on the assemblies to embrace new initiatives such as the integrated community care management and the community management of acute malnutrition that the Ghana health sector and other institutions had introduced.

Ghana News Agency