Bleak future for refugee children in Ghana
Refugee Children of Burkina Faso who are living in camps in some districts of the Upper West Region face a bleak future regarding their education and health care.
At the camps, childcare and education hang in the balance and many of the unfortunate immigrant children face a bleak future; looking to a better and hope could only come about when learning materials, school buildings, French teachers and uniforms have provided them.
Currently, a total of 3,731 children living at camps in the Sissala East Municipality, Sissala West and Lambussie Districts are not attending school and the reason is that they came from a francophone country and therefore speak French Language thereby making it difficult to integrate them into the Ghanaian Educational System.
Madam Rita Kuurinaah, an Administrator at the Upper West Regional Office of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) made this known to members of the Regional Child Protection Committee at its fourth quarter meeting held in Wa.
She said there are 1,438 children in the Sissala East Municipality out of the 2,438 immigrants while the Sissala West and Lambussie Districts harboured 2,094 and 199 children 0ut of 3,973 and 298 refugees, respectively.
Madam Kuurinaah said the presence of the immigrants had brought about challenges of the provision of potable water, food, shelter, and clothes and appealed to the World Health Organisation (WHO) to provide essential medicines to the camps to cater for the health needs of the children while the World Food Programme (WFP) aids them with food for their upkeep.
“The donor community, civil society organisations, nongovernmental organisations, and public-spirited Individuals are also welcome in this regard” she said.
The NADMO Administrator commended the local authorities for providing arable lands to the refugees to undertake farming activities to produce food crops to help feed their family members in the camps.
Madam Lilian Kpelle, the Regional Director of the Department of Social Welfare, said her office had counselled three children who had stolen at the Court of Juvenile Justice and was handling four maintenance cases, and assisted three other children who were first time offenders put on probation for a year.
The Department had also assisted 38 children of the Wa School for the Blind and Wa School for the Deaf and Dumb to get their share of the Disability Common Fund while it sensitised 10 communities on child protection, early marriages, and teenage pregnancies and five Junior High Schools on adolescent reproductive Health and personal hygiene.
Pognaa Rosemary Bangzie, a Public Health Nurse at the Regional Directorate of the Ghana Health Service, said 52 adolescents who got pregnant while in school had been assisted to deliver safely and returned to school under the Safety Network Programme.
She said the girls were poor and needy and appealed to nongovernmental organisations to support them with uniforms, books, and food to enable them to cater for the babies and to complete their education.
Source: GNA