Punishing perpetrators of “trokosi” could stop practice – CHRAJ

Mrs Florence Lamptey-Okosso, Principal Investigator, Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), has said the inability to punish the perpetrators of “trokosi” has made the practice difficult to be stopped in the country.

She described as unfortunate the continuous practice of trokosi, which was a demeaning cultural practices,  after all the effort made by stakeholders and other human rights activists to put a stop to it adding that, when proper measures were put in place, the practice of “trokosi” could be stopped.

Mrs Lamptey-Okosso who was speaking on Thursday during a workshop organised by Journalists for Human Rights, an NGO,  on the need for journalists to be more concerned on human rights issues, called on all state institutions to endeavour to abide by the rules and regulations in the constitution.

“It is sad to know that suspects who are detained for more than 48 hours are not given compensation as stipulated in the constitution”, she said.

She expressed joy that CHRAJ had now been empowered by the Constitutional Review Implementation Committee to carry out their own investigations into matters of human rights without necessarily waiting for formal complaint from individuals and organisations.

“Hitherto, there was no way we could on our own accord carry out investigations into matters bothering on human rights abuse without receiving formal complaint from interested people”, she said.

She called for the abolishing of all cultural practices which did not augur well for the total development of individuals and their communities.

“It is sad to note that among the people of Old and New Ningo, widows who do not have sons are not allowed to have their husbands’ properties”.

“This means that if a widow is blessed with only daughters, then there is the likelihood that she would not own any of her husband’s properties”, she said.

Dr Akwesi Osei, Medical Director, Accra Psychiatric Hospital, called for the establishment of more clinics for those in rural areas to enable them access good health care.

“It has been noted that most of the women who die during child birth are those in the rural areas because of their inability to access good health care”, he said.

He called on morning show hosts to endeavour to review other important issues in newspapers and not concentrate only on front page stories as middle pages of newspapers most of the time contain a lot of vital information which when discussed could assist policy makers in finding solutions to them.

Anas Aremeyaw Anas, an investigative journalist, called on journalists to venture into investigative journalism to help expose those  involved in bad deeds.

Source: GNA