Hustle of female porters in the cities
It is a hot sunny morning. The time is 10 am. A group of five women with children strapped to their backs sit together sorrounded by pans.
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When a bus stops, a chase begins as they run after clients. It is the beginning of another tedious day of carrying goods for their daily bread. It is the daily hustle of female porters popularly known in Ghana as “kayayei.”
In the socio-economic contest of Ghana, the kayayo situation is a persistent problem.
A lot of young women come from rural areas in northern Ghana to the cities of Accra or Kumasi for non-existent jobs, and end up as female porters.
This is how they work to survive when jobs in their villages do not generate enough revenue to support the whole family.
Life at the lorry stations
The porters live at lorry stations where they work for long hours throughout the day. The stories of the lives of these women are sad as they usually become victims of criminals.
Speaking in an interview, a 15-year-old “kayayo,” who would be referred to as Jemila, said thieves usually attacked them in the middle of the night to steal the little money they had made and sometimes raped them.
Jemila, whose disclosure summed up the challenges confronting a group of “kayayei” who were interviewed, said they suspected that the thieves blew a certain powder on their face as they were asleep and that made them sleep deeper, without feeling or knowing what was happening around them.
Jemila, a mother of one from Walewale in the Northern Region, said she came to Accra at the young age of 10 with the hope of starting a journey towards a prosperous life.
Shattered dream
She dreamt of being educated, but that dream did not materialise as she had no one to support her, and she therefore, resorted to carrying goods for people in the market.
She described their sleeping areas as “pathetic and not fit for human beings”.
About 10 to 15 women shared a small shed at the station where they laid their heads at the end of the day.
By 5:00 am, the hustle and bustle begins again, with the female porters rushing off to the crowded public bathrooms to bathe, after paying 50 pesewas to use the facility.
She said they had to wake up early to avoid the long queues at the public bathrooms to be able to beat time and make early sales as well.
“The bathrooms are not enough so sometimes we bath outside together, with a big basin of water to cut cost,” she said.
They cannot practise good hygiene and also wash their clothes on the street and dry them there. Sometimes their clothing get stolen.
They have no leaders to communicate their problems to so they look up to the older women among them.
Support from the ministry
Speaking to the Deputy Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Mr John A. Ackon, on what the ministry was doing to help the female porters, he said the ministry intended to establish what he described as ‘help centres’ at the stations where the porters worked.
He said the centres would have officials who would attend to them when they report their challenges and the ill treatments they suffer at the hands of criminals.
Mr Ackon said all measures to take the girls off the streets and put them in schools in the north had proved futile, since those who were sent back to their hometowns to continue their education, abandoned schooling and returned to the cities with their friends and relatives to continue to work as porters.
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