ActionAid appeals to women to contest assembly elections
Mr Sumaila Abdul-Rahman, Country Director, Action Aid Ghana, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has expressed the need for more women to contest the impending district assembly elections.
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He said the NGO is well positioned to support and encourage more women to contest and win the elections and entreated voters to also ensure that women representation at the assemblies become higher by voting for them.
Mr Abdul-Rahman made the appeal at a day’s policy forum the NGO organised in Sunyani on Wednesday.
Attended by queen mothers, assembly members, civil society organisations and NGOs, the forum was on the theme: “Linking innovations in practice to policy for accelerated development.”
The Action Aid Country Director said women remain the catalyst for change throughout the world and all and sundry should be concerned that they are lagging behind in development.
Mr Abdul-Rahman observed that policy and decision making as well as its implementation especially at the local level would be excellent if more women are actively engaged.
“We should get used to the idea that we cannot develop this nation without women,” he added.
Mr Abdul-Rahman expressed worry that abuse of rights of children and women as well as other cases of domestic violence are rife in the Brong Ahafo Region and directed the regional office of the NGO to work hard in helping to bring the situation under control.
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Mr Justice Samuel Adjei, Deputy Regional Minister commended Action Aid Ghana for the number of interventions it had implemented in helping to alleviate the plight of the people in the region.
He called for support in government’s efforts to convert all polytechnics into technically inclined universities, to help train the required human resource base for accelerated national development.
Mrs Christiana Amarchey, Regional Programme Manager of Action Aid said since the NGO came to region in 2000, it had worked in a number of ways in helping to alleviate poverty in the area.
She said under women’s right, Action Aid has identified domestic violence as well as some outmoded traditional practices that hinders the wellbeing and total development of women and children.
She said the NGO has been organising periodic girls and boys camps as a means to help unearth and nurture talents of children so that they would grow to become responsible adults.
Mrs Amarchey said the NGO has established youth centres in some districts to offer skill training to the unemployed and school dropouts to enable them to become self reliant.