The sight of children, both from Ghana and
foreign countries who beg for alms on the streets across the country,
paints a gloomy picture. According to the Child Rights International
(CRI), a non-governmental organisation concerned with the welfare of
children, this calls for the strengthening of the social support system
and the institution of proactive measures to ensure that the children
are protected, taken off the streets and integrated with their families.
The Executive Director of Child Right
International, Mr Bright Kwela Appiah, has ,therefore, urged the
Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Gender, Children and Social Protection
and the Interior to take the appropriate action to repatriate all
non-Ghanaian children who beg for alms on the streets of the country.
Addressing the organisation’s media child
protection accountability series, Mr Appiah said the ministries must
engage the embassies of the countries from where the child beggars have
migrated to Ghana to facilitate their safe repatriation.
Mr Appiah, who expressed concern over the growing
rate of children on the streets which put the lives of the children at
risk and expose them to sexual predators, said non-Ghanaians could also
be recognised under Ghana’s social safety net in order to make it
possible for them to access rights of Ghanian children within Ghana’s
Social protection system.
Activities
He said another gloomy picture was the issue of
Ghanaian children engaged in selling at traffic intersections, carrying
loads in market places, begging for alms or being used by adults who are
either aged or persons living with disability to beg for alms, and
sometimes clean wind screen of vehicles at the various traffic
intersections.
Although the organisation could not give details on
statistics on the total number of children on the streets of Ghana, it
said the phenomenon was becoming alarming, pointing out that, "Streetism
has gradually become one of the most widespread child protection issue
in cities across the countries such as Accra, Kumasi, Takoradi and
Tamale."
Mr Appiah said children of schooling age were found
roaming the street during school hours, making it impossible for them
to access their rights to education, safety, quality healthcare among
others.
Sleeping places
At night, he said these children slept on
pavements, in front of stores and other places without proper shelter,
and at the mercy of mosquitoes and sexual predators.
The children on the street, he said also stood the
danger of being recruited into dangerous vices such as armed robbery and
prostitution.
Mr Appiah said the CRI recently undertook a study
where the activities of street children in some parts of Accra were
observed for a month.
He said when some of the children were interviewed,
they disclosed that they engaged in begging and selling on the street
due to their parents inability to fulfil their role as parents.
Some of the children, Mr Appiah said claimed they
were instructed by their parents to beg for money for the upkeep of the
family.
The study, he said, found that most of the children
were migrants from rural areas to the city with their parents in search
for financial sustainability.
To nib the menace in the bud, he entreated the
public to return to the communal system of child upbringing where caring
for children was a communal responsibility and not just that of the
parent of the child.
