The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Ms Otiko Afisah Djaba has charged traditional authorities to help halt the increasing rate of early marriages and teenage pregnancies in the region.
Mrs Djaba who was interacting with Chiefs and Queen Mothers at the Upper East Region House of Chiefs said it had become usual for children less than 16 years in the rural areas to engage in sex, adding that the phenomenon was worrying and needed collaborative efforts to put an end to it.
“Children cannot be parents, they must enjoy childhood, and they must put a stop to it”. The Gender Minister stressed.
The meeting was part of a working tour of the Gender Minister to the Upper East Region to acquaint herself with activities of various departments under the Ministry and to meet allied institutions and organisations as well as inspect ongoing Ghana National Household Registry (GNHR) exercise in the region.
The Minister tasked the Chiefs and the Queenmothers to be vigilant in ensuring that all children of school going age in their communities went to school and to further ensure that steps were taken to check markets to ensure that no child was seen loitering during school hours.
She also urged them to map out plans to organise regular fora for communities to air their concerns and opinions on critical issues affecting the areas.
Ms Djaba urged them to help create jobs in their various communities with such activities as soap-making, fruit processing, shea butter extraction, and dawadawa processing as well as weaving of local cloths, and said there were raw materials in abundance in the region for such activities.
She said the creation of jobs would prevent the youth from migrating annually to southern Ghana for greener pastures, adding ‘it will be much easier for the government to eradicate kayaye (head porter) if more jobs are created for the youth in the region.’
She encouraged them to advocate the one-district-one-factory projects to add value to the raw materials they produced locally and charged them to make lands moderate and available for people to build more factories and for other development.
The Paramount Chief of the Naga Traditional Area, Naba Olando A. Awini III, President of the Upper East Region House of Chiefs who Welcomed the Minister on behalf of the chiefs congratulated the Minister on her appointment to the Gender Ministry and assured her of the House’s support in every efforts towards making life meaningful for women and children in the communities.
The President appealed to the Minister to help stop teenage pregnancy and support to empower women economically in the region by putting them first on the development agenda of government, and said it was the surest way to eliminate poverty in the communities.
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