Streetism is becoming a silent national crisis
The problem of streetism seems to be increasing by the day. Currently, over 50 street children report daily at Chance for Children, a temporary caregiver centre located at Adabraka in Accra, just for food and counselling.
According to managers of the centre, some of the children who visited the centre were new whiles others were frequent visitors who came to eat and play.
Mr Osman Adam Ibrahim, manager of the centre, told The Mirror that the centre sometimes recorded up to 70 street children daily but because their facilities were over stretched, they often took care of only 45.
Mr Ibrahim said the phenomenon meant that streetism was becoming a silent national crisis which needed urgent attention.
He attributed the rise in street children to the poor social intervention programmes in Ghana and lack of enforcement of laws.
“These children mostly sleep on the street and do not go to school. This means the security of the country is bleak since most street children will end up as robbers, prostitutes, drug addicts and other social miscreants in the society.
“This picture spells doom for the country because most of them grow and turn into hardened criminals if care is not taken,” he said.
According to Mr Ibrahim, most of the street children were brought to the city from other regions by their relatives or came on their own.
Department of social welfare
The Head of NGOs at the Department of Social Welfare, Dela Ashiagbor, said the department did not have research document on the number of street children in Ghana.
He explained that the department is under resourced and therefore unable to carry out an extensive research that would enable them to know the number of children on the streets of Ghana.
He however, admitted that the number of street children in Ghana was becoming alarming and blamed part of the problem on the breakdown of the extended family system.
Mr Ashiagbor appealed to people to accept and take care of children of relatives who had passed on in order to prevent them from coming onto the streets.
Chance for Children
Chance for Children is a non-governmental organisation which has been in existence since 1999, and is committed to giving new hope to the hopeless and giving childhoods to children through their innovative social intervention programmes.
The charity aims at re-integrating children back to their families, give them general guidance, vocational training and the skills needed to live a successful independent life that will see them off the streets and into income-earning jobs and good housing.