The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection; Otiko Afisa Djaba has charged Ghanaian women to speak their minds on issues that affect them without fear or favour.

According to her, the rights of women to speak must be respected as the rights of men.

"Women also have the right to speak their minds but its quite unfortunate that when a woman is bold, courageous and brave to speaks her mind, she is tagged as being rude and disrespectful,” she advised.

The Minister whose vetting was characterized by some controversies in Parliament over her failure to do her National Service, when completed her tertiary education made this admonishing to women in an interview on the sidelines of a programme in Accra.

She reminded women in leadership not be frighten, intimidated or demonized by their fellow men for speaking their minds.

He revealed that one of her major challenge at the Ministry was poverty eradication, which should be the priority of all developing nations.

According to the Minister, for a country to e develop it needs to eradicate poverty and eliminate anger to enhance better living standards.

"Social protection is not about just children and women but for all, as every Ghanaian has the right to a good quality health life as contained in the New Patriotic Party’s manifesto to respect the right of all."

Madam Djaba in an another breath, disclosed that her Ministry will expand the National School Feeding Programme from its current state of 1.7 million pupils to 3 million pupils to enable the Ministry feed more school children across the country and also help create more jobs for the jobless youth.

With regards to children’s welfare the Minister, said the Ministry will introduce a district integrated social service program for children all over the country to consolidate education and justice as well as all other social programmes.

"We will also strengthen, enforce and continue to execute the policies that will increase enrollment and retention in schools, like the school feeding program and the capitation grant have done over the years.”