<<Print>>

The President of Challenging Heights, James Kofi Annan, has blamed fathers for all the sufferings children are going through in Ghana. He said over 70% of all children found on the streets of Ghana are as a result of irresponsibility on the part of fathers, and over 90% of all trafficked victims are due to same. He made these observations at the end of year Management Committee meeting of his organization, Challenging Heights over the weekend. He said in the year 2011, Challenging Heights provided support to a total of 1,420 children made up of 872 girls, and 588 boys across its programs in 40 communities across 6 districts. An additional 260 women received a total of GHC75,000 in microloans to undertake various businesses in order to support their children. According to Challenging Heights, they had found from their programs that because the laws of childcare do not work in this country, parents, especially fathers, continue to neglect their children with impunity. Many fathers give birth and fail to care for them. They leave all the responsibilities on the mothers, who sometimes out of frustrations sell these children to traffickers for the purposes of labour exploitation. The organization said government should show more commitment towards the care and protection of children, adding that the near collapse of the National Program for the Elimination of Child Labour in Cocoa is worrying. �One remarkable thing about our programs for 2011 was that, we sought for compensation for 20 ex-child slaves, and these compensation went toward the skills training and the education of those survivors, and pursued the prosecution of two other traffickers who proved recalcitrant�, Mr. Annan Stated. �The year 2011 was a milestone. We constructed a modern 65-capacity child trafficking survivors support shelter, and won 2 international awards, bringing our total stock of international awards to six in six years!�, the organization said. Mr. Annan said, out of the total number of children supported, 37 of them were rescued from slavery, while the rest were children either at risk of being trafficked, or vulnerable to other forms of exploitation.