Streetism in Ghana is becoming a serious problem that requires immediate attention to prevent it from getting worse.

These days, it is common to see mothers relaxing in the shade as their children as young as two years stroll along the streets begging for alms from oncoming vehicles and onlookers.

This typically occurs around busy intersections and thoroughfares, like the ring road, the Kwame Nkrumah Circle area, the Atomic Junction roundabout, and the airport area, among others.

Every day, more and more chil­dren are discovered living on the streets. This is unsafe and starting to become an annoyance, therefore action needs to be taken to stop the situation from getting worse.

The United Nations estimates that around 61,492 people under the age of 18 are on the streets in the Greater Accra region of Ghana alone.

Even though there has been progress in offering assistance and services to homeless children, there is still much work to be done to completely eradicate the issue.

In fact, a number of reasons have contributed to this threat, including the challenging socioe-economic conditions that families are facing, rising urbanisation, poverty, a lack of family support, divorce, family violence, low levels of education, and single parenting.

These children are more vulner­able to malnourishment, illness, and injury since they often do not have access to basic needs such as cloth­ing, food, shelter, and healthcare. They are exposed to harsh weather, which frequently results in a range of ailments and health issues.

According to research, children who grow up on the streets are often the ones who take up social vices including drug addiction, pros­titution, armed robbery, and other similar behaviours.

The Spectator believes that pub­lic education should be used to raise awareness of streetism’s detrimen­tal effects on children’s develop­ment in order to combat it.

Furthermore, in order to ef­fectively combat streetism, we implore the government, churches, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), the community, and philan­thropists, among others, to grant access to social services.

In light of this, The Spectator praises the government for recent­ly cutting the sod to allow for the development of a two-storey facility that will offer comprehensive care for street children in the nation’s capital.

The “Mother Teresa Soup Kitch­en” (MTSK) is intended to provide the impoverished and homeless children living on Accra’s streets with at least one healthy meal per day in addition to counselling and skill development.

“This project hopes to take children off the street starting from this very community and propel it nationwide,” Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia stated when he cut the sod for the project,

He continued, “When this proj­ect takes off, Mother Teresa Soup Kitchen will be the biggest action by a private individual and an NGO against the menace of street chil­dren in Ghana.”

Let us work together to combat streetism throughout the nation.