Africa-Press – Ghana. Hawkers in Sunyani, the Bono Regional capital have called on the government to include them to benefit from socio-economic intervention programmes to live decent lives.
They also expressed concern about their present living conditions and appealed for shelter and government job opportunities to position them well to contribute to progressive and sustainable economic development.
Speaking in an interview in Sunyani, the hawkers, mostly head potters and truck and wheelbarrow pushers said they were worried that society and the government had neglected them.
They spoke on the sidelines of a community forum organised by the Global Media Foundation (GloMeF), an anti-corruption, human rights and media advocacy Non-Governmental Organisation in line with the implementation of its Resilient City for Adolescent (RCA) project in Sunyani.
GloMeF in partnership with the Citizens Watch Ghana (CWG) and the Indigenous Women Empowerment Network, (IWEN) with funding from the Ecorys, United Kingdom and Foundation Botnar is implementing the three-year project in the Sunyani and Sunyani West Municipalities.
The forum sought to identify, collect and forward the emerging challenges confronting adolescent people to the two Assemblies for the required attention aligned with the project’s objective of improving the lives of adolescent and vulnerable people.
Imoro Hadi, a truck pusher, regretted that most of the hawkers, including young girls, slept in front of shops at the Sunyani Central Business District (CBD), a situation which exposed them to dangers at night.
He said they had traveled from the Northern part of the country to find decent jobs; however, their present condition was not the best.
“Our living health conditions are worsened during the wet seasons because we are highly exposed to mosquito bites because of the lack of decent shelter”, Salifu Mohammed, a wheelbarrow pusher stated.
Commenting on their plight, Mr Raphael Godlove Ahenu, the Chief Executive Officer of the GloMeF told that vulnerable people deserved decent shelter as required by the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights.
He said Ghana was signatory to the several human rights protocols and conventions which enjoined the nation to guarantee the rights to life, shelter, healthcare, and education to all vulnerable people irrespective of their locations.
“That means their request or appeal is in the right direction and as a nation we must respect their fundamental human rights and do more to make the hawkers live dignified lives”, Mr Ahenu stated.
He called on the government to alleviate the plights of the hawkers by ensuring that they also benefited from the nation’s employable skills training opportunities.
Nonetheless, Mr Ahenu urged the hawkers to form associations or groups, saying the implementation of the RCA project was also targeted to provide some of them with employable skills training too.
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