Alban S.K. Bagbin
Speaker of Parliament, Alban S.K. Bagbin says the issue of street children should prick the conscience of all well-meaning people of the Ghanaian society.
According to him, homeless children suffer various forms of deprivation and abuse, while they live on the street, calling on the government and all adults to create the required conditions that will support child survival and development.
Speaking at the celebration of his 65th birthday with inmates of the Homeland Training Centre, a Catholic Action for Street Children (CASC), at Adjei Kojo in the Greater Accra Region at the weekend, Mr. Bagbin stated that it was imperative for the country to consider how its decisions, policies, laws and infrastructure would improve the conditions in which the future children of society develop.
“Today is a day I want to share and celebrate the Catholic Action for Street Children in acknowledgement of our role as adults, leaders and government to create the required conditions that will support child survival and development,” he stressed.
The Speaker said he sees this as an existential issue for which “very little has been done by various leaders, governments and parents, I think we need to sit up.”
He noted that the UN conventions on the right of a child, which Ghana is number one signatory, demands of all countries that have signed onto it to guarantee the right of a child to a name, parentage, play, health, education, shelter, food and many others.
According to him, the Ghana National Commission on Children was set up to help actualise these rights as provided for by the convention.
“A lot has been done by this country, but so much still remains to be done. We must remember the time we have lost to place a child at the centre of all that we do will never come back,” he argued.
Speaker Bagbin asserted that a child cannot afford to wait for the leaders and adults to get their axes together.
“They might have wasted away by the time we are ready,” he posited, while quoting a Lebanese-American artist and poet, Kahlil Gibran, as saying, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.”
The Speaker presented food items worth GH¢50,000 and a cheque of GH¢50,000 to the training centre for the upkeep of the children.
Director of the CASC, Rev. Bro. Cosmos Kwawuna, expressed gratitude to the Speaker for selecting the centre to celebrate “his life of generosity.”
By Ernest Kofi Adu