Mr Augustine Bosrotsi, Deputy Eastern Regional Director of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), has tasked the Eastern Regional Child Protection Committee (ECPC) to work together with communities to tackle child protection issues in the region.

He said to ensure a holistic approach to child protection issues, the committee and other stakeholders must come together and devise strategies to make the communities take part in the processes.

He said community profiling and community action plans could be used as tools to design specific approaches and methods to tackle each community on issues concerning child protection, education, and health needs.

The ECPC is made up of representatives from the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU), Departments of Social Welfare and Community Development, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), traditional authorities, Non-Governmental Organizations with a focus on child development and the media under the auspices of the Department of Children of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection.

Nana Kwame Oppong Owusu, Chief of Jumapo in the New Juaben Traditional area and chairman of the ECPC, called on parents to take a keen interest in the education of their children, especially, in this difficult times where children were made to learn from home.

He urged parents to ensure that their children took part in the online and television learning programmes at home to make up for the school contact hours missed due to the COVID-19 restrictions.

Mr Kwame Darteh, Eastern Regional Director of the Department of Children, disclosed that defilement cases in the region was on the increase but most of them were not reported and charged the committee members to ensure that perpetrators were brought to book.

He appealed to the Ministry of Gender to ensure that medical fees of abuse victims were made free to encourage abuse victims to report such incidences other than settling them at home to avoid the monetary demands.

Ms Vera Allotey, Eastern Regional Director of Community Development, observed that some children did not partake in the just ended polio vaccination exercise due to some religious beliefs of parents and asked the ECPC to take it up to ensure that no child was left out in such a health intervention.

She requested for support from PLAN International Ghana to enable her outfit to train five officers across the 27 districts in the region, to sensitize communities on sexual abuses and child protection issues on the whole.