Adult should appreciate child rights – Director
Mrs. Florence Ayisi Quartey, Programme Director of the Department of Children, on Friday urged the adult public to discard the idea that the recognition of child rights would make children rude or disrespectful.
She was speaking at a regional consultation meeting with children on Ghana’s third, fourth and fifth consolidated reports to the United Nations Committee on the rights of the child in Sunyani.
The meeting was attended by students of Nyamaah Junior High School, Twene Amanfo and Sunyani Senior High Schools.
The Programme Director explained that the rights were meant to protect children and to ensure that they were provided with the necessities of life.
Mrs Quartey noted that “in every generation, things are worst three times but we should not forget that children are abused, maltreated, belittled and they go through situations that affect their well-being”.
She stressed that with all the punishment meted to children, they still misbehaved in society. They must rather be taught how to be responsible in life and not to be given forms of punishment that could traumatize them.
The Programme Director noted that such conditions affected children’s education and emphasized that children should rather be corrected and not to be punished all the time.
Mrs Quartey stated that “parents nowadays do not get time to train their children to know their rights and responsibilities so they would grow to be responsible in society”.
She appealed to the general public to be prepared to listen to children, know their problems and learn how to help them to solve them so that they would not grow up in an environment that would “put them in a tight corner”.
Mr. Sylvester Kyei-Gyamfi, research officer of the Department, called on the Government to resource all schools by providing the necessary facilities to enhance their studies.
He noted with regret that since the introduction of the Computerized Placement System, some students had refused to continue their education because they did not get their first choice schools.
The research officer advised the students to continue with their education to the highest level to become responsible and not liabilities in society.
Mr. George Yaw Ankamah, Deputy Brong-Ahafo Regional Director of the Department, urged the students to be humble and to respect elderly people so that they could be accepted wherever they go.
Source: GNA