Osu Children’s Home Committee’s Public Hearing

…Social Welfare Boss Accuses Him Of Skewing Video To Create Negative Impression

Ghana’s ace undercover journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, yesterday came under serious credibility attack from Mr. Stephen Tampuri Adongo, Director of the Department of Social Welfare at the first public hearing of the 11-member committee tasked by the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare to look into allegations of abuse at the Osu Children’s Home.

Mr. Adongo’s argument was that the video footage that exposed myriads of ill treatment at the orphanage was skewed to give the children’s home the most negative impression that nothing good was going on there.

“The video was not fair to the Home. It was skewed to give the most negative impression about the home. If you are for the wrong anywhere in this world you will get it; is the investigator telling us that he did not see the cleaned environment at the home? You see, the role of the journalist is not always to ponder on all that is wrong. The caregivers at the home are challenging the report as not credible,” the Social Welfare boss pointed out.

The Director, who spoke in an interview with The New Crusading GUIDE, after his appearance at the first public hearing of the Committee at the Media Centre of the Accra Sports Stadium, maintained that although the situation at the Osu Children’s Home was not the best, he wondered why only the negative aspects were highlighted in the documentary produced by Anas.

“There must at least be some positive aspects within the home which must be shown to us, but I do not think the investigator showed much of these things in his story,” he said. According to Mr. Adongo, one of the caregivers in the footage, one Comfort, had left the orphanage about two years ago therefore, if the investigator claimed his investigations took a seven-month period, there was no way it would have captured the said woman.

In his statements before the committee, Mr. Adongo admitted that some of the issues that arose on security of the home and the number of caregivers were valid, and that the orphanage would employ more security to man that place. He supported the many cases of maltreatment, instances of abuse, confinement of minors of the Osu Children’s Home and the Osu Remand Home shown in the video, describing them as “unfortunate incidents.”

Mr. Adongo said the Department of Social Welfare was putting in place measures to address some of the issues raised by the investigator before the story broke. He also apologized to Ghanaians for any inconvenience the footage created, especially the negative impression that nothing good was happening at the orphanage, assuring that there were equally good things in the home that the investigator refused to capture in his footage.

It will be recalled that the Honourable Minister for Employment and Social Welfare, E T Mensah, inaugurated an 11 member Committee of enquiry a couple of weeks ago to investigate allegations of child abuse in the Osu Children’s Home made bare by a documentary put out by Anas Aremeyaw Anas. The documentary was extensively shown on the various television networks in Ghana and widely written on by the print and electronic media, generating various reactions and sentiments from the general public, ranging from serious criticisms, condemnation and cries of “crucify them,” (referring to the handlers of the orphans)

The mandate of the Committee included among other things, reviewing the full text of the video footage, examining the structure of the Osu Children’s home, looking into the cases of child neglect and abuse and allegations of theft of donated items to the home, investigating allegations of sodomy and making appropriate recommendations to improve general management and ways to prevent any such occurrences in future.