Regional News of Sunday, 13 March 2005

Source: GNA

Tema CHRAJ urges children to report maltreatment on them

Tema, March 13, GNA - Mrs Joyce Boahen, Acting Tema Sub-Regional Director of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) has called on parents to give adequate training to their children to become responsible future adults. She said Ghana, interested in children's welfare and mindful of her brighter future, enacted the children's acts 560 of 1998 to enable them know their rights to be cultured and confidently take over from the aged.

Since charity begins at the home, the onus rest on parents to ensure that their children know and understand the laws that protect them from any inhuman treatment meted out to them, she told teachers and pupils of Tema Community 11 Complex Primary School in the first of school educational programmes lined up by the CHRAJ. The Acting Director entreated adults to do their best to ensure that children obey simple rules and regulations and endeavour to prevent truancy, which is a factor to indiscipline.

Mrs Florence Lamptey Okosso, Public Education Officer of the CHRAJ, educated the pupils on the various rights they enjoy under the law and said as kids they have the right to education, clothing, shelter and food. She asked them to muster the courage to report any maltreatment on them to any adult or their teachers for immediate action to be taken. She however warned them against taking advantage of the privilege to misbehave when they are being disciplined. When Mrs Okosso asked them to narrate their experiences at home on whether they were being loaded with too many household chores than they could handle, there was a reflex remark by a class three girl who said "oh like me I do plenty work but I have no say".