Mama Attrato II, Queen of Ho-Dome, on Thursday expressed her dissatisfaction with operators of drinking bars and restaurants who engage teenage girls as sales persons.

She said the practice was exploitative as it exposed the girls to abuses and prevented them from acquiring skills for gainful lifetime employment.

Mama Attrato was addressing a workshop on domestic abuse and violence against girls and women in Ho, which the Ho Asogli Queen Mothers organized with support from the Commonwealth Foundation.

Mama Attrato said it was equally unacceptable for working mothers to engage teenage girls as baby sitters thus denying those girls their right to education and skills training.

She therefore appealed to traditional authorities especially queen mothers to fight the “anomaly and lead the way to liberate young girls and women employed in the informal sector from poverty.”

Mrs Monica Amegashie-Viglo, Chairperson of the Ho branch of Tailors and Dressmakers Association, said many girls who had acquired skills in dressmaking and hairdressing were not practicing those vocations.

She said majority of those girls had taken to petty trading and as sales persons at drinking bars.**