NGO RESCUES 56 CHILDREN (PAGE 11)

THE Rural Project Support Network, a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) at Abokobi in the Ga East Municipality, in conjunction with the municipal assembly has rescued 56 children, including adults, from selling on the streets and engaging in stone quarrying under an exercise which began two years ago.
One of the 56 rescued, who is now 19 years old, completed a junior high school at Pantang just last academic year, while the rest, aged between five and 19, are currently in various stages of their basic level of education.
Madam Felicia Sosu Lartey, Executive Director of Rural Project Support Network, who disclosed this to the Daily Graphic in an interview, said some communities near Abokobi, namely Boi, Oyarifa, Adjoko, Seseli and Abooman bemoaned the 19-year-old boy’s depths of despair, resulting in banning the use of children of school age in stone quarrying in the area.
She said estate developers had unfortunately resorted to using children, some as young as five years old, as a source of cheap labour in their construction business in order to maximise profits.
She said some of the parents of such children who suffered such exploitation were poor, while some of the children themselves were orphans, stressing that the plight of the children had encouraged the organisation to move to their rescue with the support of the Ga East Municipal Assembly.
Madam Lartey pointed out that efforts by the NGO to reunite the children with their families had not been successful, since some of the parents had pleaded with the NGO to adopt their children because, for economic reasons, they could not look after them any longer.
She said the NGO and the Ga East Municipal Assembly had recently held a meeting to find ways of supporting children who migrated from rural communities to the municipality in search of greener pastures, which was rather non-existent.
She said apart from the 56, another 46 adults had been selected for skills training in such income-generating ventures as soap-making, bakery, groundnut oil extraction and bee-keeping to keep them away from prostitution and other social vices.
Madam Lartey said recently the NGO, in collaboration with Ghana Network of Reflect Practitioners on Children Rights (PAMOJA), Right and Voice Initiative (RAVI), Ghana AIDS Commission and the Pantang Hospital, organised an HIV and AIDS counselling and testing programme in 12 communities in the Ga East Municipality.
The Executive Director of Rural Support Network said out of 1,147 people who were tested, 17 tested positive, explaining that the disease was real and the network had launched an educational programme to deal with the HIV menace and other issues such as child labour and prostitution.
She, therefore, appealed to the NGOs engaged in similar projects to pool resources to assist the Ga East Municipality in its fight against these social vices.