CHILDREN RESCUED FROM QUARRY SITE (BACK PAGE)

Story; Abdul Aziz
SIX children, aged between seven and 11, have been rescued from a stone quarry near Abokobi in Accra, where they were cracking rocks and stones for a living.
After their hard days’ work, the children were said to be spending the nights in shacks and makeshift huts provided by their employers.
They were rescued by a team from the Ga East Municipal Assembly and members of a non-governmental organisation (NGO) the Rural Project Support Network.
Mrs Felicia Sosu Lartey, Executive Director of the NGO, said because some of the children required medical treatment, they were sent to the hospital, while efforts were being made to get them enrolled in schools in the Ga East Municipality.
She said every effort was being made by the NGO to contact their parents, some of whom were in the Northern Region of the country.
She said some of the children told them they had lost one or both parents and the treatment meted out to them by family members who inherited their parents’ estates compelled them to run away from home.
Mrs Sosu-Lartey said two of the children said they were taken away from their parents to Accra with the promise of giving them quality education in Accra, but that never materialise.
She added that the children, who were without protective clothing or the right tools, expressed their willingness to further their education and avoid the dangerous work they had found themselves in.
She, therefore, appealed to parents not to hesitate to send their children to school, since that was the surest way of breaking the poverty cycle in the rural communities and not through child labour to supplement their incomes.
She said the NGO was assisting a number of school dropouts who could not further their education because of poverty to acquire skills in income-generating ventures to set up small-scale businesses in dressmaking, hair dressing and soap-making as well as bakery.
Mrs Sosu-Lartey said since the NGO started the exercise of recruitment and enrolment in skills training, some of the girls had passed out and were successfully running their own small-scale enterprises.