News
Provide children with education, protect them from early sex …Gender expert urges parents in UWR
Madam Charity Bature (with microphone), addressing the community members
The Upper West Regional Director of the Department of Gender, Madam Charity Bature, has called on parents to take responsibility for their wards to help prevent teenage pregnancy and school dropout.
She said parents were responsible for providing for their children in terms of food, clothing, and shelter; however, some parents rather encouraged their wards to go outside and provide for themselves, which in some cases leads to teenage pregnancy.
Madam Charity Bature made the call at a community engagement on Social and Behavioural Change (SBC) organised by the Club of Children and Youth in Broadcasting (CYIB-Curious Minds) in partnership with Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Funds (UNICEF) at Kagu in the Wa Municipality.
She said the high increase in school dropouts was worrying, and parents needed to take action to ensure children became responsible as they grew.
Madam Charity Bature urged parents and community leaders to encourage their pregnant girls to go back to school after delivery to carve a better future for themselves and their babies.
“Let’s own up to our responsibilities as parents and train our children to become successful in the future. We need to have time to educate our girl child at home. When you have no time for the child, the child becomes infl uenced by peers and, in the end, becomes pregnant and a school dropout,” she said.
She stressed the need for parents to desist from marrying off their children and rather provide them with education and also protect them from early sex.
She encouraged young people, especially women and children, to speak up on issues that affected them.
She advised girls in the community to take their education very seriously and urged the chiefs to strengthen measures to curb the menace of school dropouts.
The Project Coordinator of CYIB-Curious Minds, Mr. Kingsley Obeng-Kyereh, said the engagement sought to create a platform to interact with children, parents, and community leaders to understand their challenges and also educate them on the need to be responsible for their children.
He said the best role model for a child was the parents, and he urged parents to live an exemplary life for their wards to emulate.
Mr. Kingsley Obeng-Kyereh said lack of parental care for children was one of the causes of teenage pregnancies and child marriage and encouraged parents to double their efforts in catering for their children to help curb the situation.
He said Curious Minds sought to ensure that children and youth were well informed and participated in decision-making on issues affecting them by sharing information, building partnerships, and generating knowledge.
From Rafia Abdul Razak, Wa
News
Swallowed by the Sea! …Keta’s coastal lines, landmarks, efforts to preserve heritage
The Atlantic Ocean is no longer a distant blue horizon for the people of Keta.
It now circles around their doorsteps, uninvited, unrelenting, pulling down walls and other structures, erasing memories, and threatening lives.
Hovering precariously between the restless sea and the Keta Lagoon, this once-thriving coastal town is slowly being obliterated.
Salt water has become both a physical and metaphorical threat, dissolving the town’s past as fast as it claims its future.
Madam Aku Atitso, 62, lives in a crumbling former Prisons Service quarters – one of the few structures still standing on the eroded stretch of Queen Street.
She sits quietly at the entrance, preparing a modest breakfast for herself and her granddaughter.
The air is thick with salt and silence. “The sea took everything,” she says softly. “My husband’s nets, our mattress, our memories all gone overnight.” Her voice trembles. “This place too is dying. But it’s the last place with a roof over my head.”
A few metres away, Aunty Esinam, 79, watches the sea from a low stool beside a wooden shelter. Her eyes do not blink. “That spot,” she points, “used to be someone’s living room, a whole family lived there”.
It’s not just homes that are vanishing. Landmarks that anchored Keta’s cultural identity are disappearing one after another. The once-imposing Fort Prinzenstein, a haunting relic of the transatlantic slave trade is now more of a ruin than a monument.
the encroaching waters along Keta’s
coast.
encroaching waters along Keta’s coast
The colonial-era Bremen factory, the old cinema where generations of children once laughed at flickering black-and-white films is also gone.
Queen Street, once the town’s bustling backbone, is now a watery corridor choked with debris.
Standing atop a section of the sea defence wall, 69-year-old retired teacher Efo Kwasi Agbeko surveys what remains.
“The first police station is mostly gone,” he says, gesturing part of the building stuck in the sea sand, only ruins and a few rooms remain.
“This town is fighting, but the sea is winning,” he said.
Even the Cape St. Paul Lighthouse, Keta’s historic sentinel, leans perilously toward the water, and fishermen say holes in the shore are opening more frequently, sometimes every week.
That leaves a thick cloud of uncertainty hanging around the historic town of Keta.
Once upon a time, it was a vibrant town noted for business but currently left with ruins with a few of the residents watching in awe the sea’s devastation.
From: Geoffrey Kwame Buta, Keta, Volta Region
News
Ghanaians climax Easter with fun-filled activities
Christians around the world and other faith based groups last Monday climaxed the Easter celebration with a number of fun-filled outdoor and indoor activities.
With streets empty, fun seekers stormed church premises where picnics were held while others partied in many ways.
Others spent the day at the various beaches and music and film shows occupying the others.
velleyball competition
at the Laboma Beach
Church in Tema Community 8 engaged
in a number of activities including the
popular draught competition
At the churches, participants engaged in bible reading, football, volleyball, playing cards, table tennis, horse racing, bouncing castles, swimming and oware.
one of the picnic venues
Others played ludo, tag of war, lime and spoon, draught, music competitions among others.
The Spectator captured some of the exciting scenes around Accra-Tema for the benefit of readers.
Story & pictures by Victor A. Buxton
