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Engage boys in domestic chores – Parents advised
A young boy sweeping
Parents have been advised to distribute domestic roles and chores to ensure that boys supported girls to have maximum time to study and improve upon their academic performance.
Ms Dorcas Zoogah, the National Chairperson for the Young Urban Women Movement (YUWM), a move¬ment under the ActionAid Ghana, a non-governmental organisation said, males mostly performed better than females at school because of the less burden they have at home.
She stated that, it was necessary to give girls the support they need¬ed to ensure that they climbed up the academic ladder like their male counterparts.
Ms Zoogah stated this at the launch of the Upper West Regional Chapter of the YUWM at Wa by the ActionAid.
The YUWM is an organised group of women with the objective of em¬powering young women living in rural and urban communities of Ghana with skills to secure economic inde-pendence, have control over their bodiesas well as advocate better opportunities and rights in the areas of sexual and gender-based violence, unpaid care work and decent work.
In an attempt to address the im¬pact of unpaid care work on school girls, Ms Zoogah said, if mothers re¬distributed the chores and made boys to assist, girls would have some time on their hands to study and engage in other productive ventures.
“These girls wake up and do so much that they get exhausted even before the day begins. They have to do so much chores and get exhausted even before they go to school and are therefore unable to concen¬trate,” she said.
She cited instances where as a lit¬tle girl, she would be in class but will be thinking of the number of buckets of water she would need to draw home after school and which route to use to get to the source of water in addition to the evening meal she would be preparing for the family.
“The issue also has to do with the fact that some women do not even consider what they do as work and do not see the stress they go through. So our aim is to create the awareness about unpaid care work and help the females with better communication strategies to persuade the men to share in those roles,” she said.
Touching on sexual and gen¬der-based violence, the Chairperson was worried that most of the abuses suffered at home were perpetuat¬ed by females against females such as mothers or sisters-in-law against daughters-in law and asked that women should support each other so that they could jointly demand same respect from men.
“We need mothers-in-law who support daughters-in-law and not abuse them so that together they can demand for their rights from the men in the home but this does not happen overnight, it happens as a result of awareness creation and good commu¬nication skills,” she added.
From Darlington Fordjour, Wa
The Member of Parliament for Nsawam Adoagyiri, Frank Annoh Dompreh, has expressed concern over delays in the release of the District Assemblies Common Fund, warning that the situation is stalling development across the country.
On his facebook page, he described as a matter of urgent national importance, the Minority Chief Whip pointed to what he sees as a growing crisis of unpaid contractors, abandoned projects, and halted infrastructure works in many districts.
He noted that several communities are grappling with half completed schools, unfinished health facilities, abandoned markets, deteriorating roads, and stalled sanitation projects.
According to him, many contractors who have executed projects for district assemblies have not been paid, forcing some construction firms to demobilise from sites while workers lose their jobs.
He stressed that the District Assemblies Common Fund is not a discretionary allocation but a constitutional requirement under Article 252 of the 1992 Constitution, intended to support development at the local level.
In his view, years of delayed releases and accumulated arrears have weakened district development financing and disrupted projects meant to improve living conditions in communities.
He further argued that some payments made in recent years were largely the settlement of old debts rather than funding for new or ongoing projects, a situation he believes has affected contractor confidence and local economic activity.
He described the issue as more than a budgetary challenge, characterising it as a development emergency and a governance concern.
He therefore urged the appropriate authorities to pay outstanding DACF arrears, settle contractors who have completed their work, and ensure that transfers to districts are automatic and predictable.
He maintained that decentralisation can only succeed when district assemblies receive adequate and timely funding to carry out development projects.
He emphasised that stalled projects directly affect ordinary citizens, since they rely on such infrastructure for education, healthcare, transportation, sanitation, and economic activities.
He called for renewed attention to grassroots development, insisting that national progress should not be concentrated only in major cities but extended to all communities.
By: Jacob Aggrey
Richard Appiah, the footballer who killed two children and stored part of their bodies in a fridge at Abesim in the Bono Region in 2021 has been handed a lifetime sentence.
This was after a five member panel of judges at the Accra High Court returned a verdict of guilty against the convict.
Appiah, 32, also a draughtsman would spend the rest of his life in prison after he was convicted of murder.
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BY MALIK SULLEMANA
