Pognaa Amamata Mumuni, the Queen mother of Duori in the Wala Traditional Area, has expressed concern over the failure of some parents to take interest in the protection and care of their children, especially the girls.
She said the indifferent attitude of some parents towards their girl children sometimes led them into teenage and unwanted pregnancies as the girls were liberal to engage in illicit activities, including immoral acts.
Pognaa Mumuni expressed the concern during a Bi-annual review meeting of the Community Aid for Rural Development (CARD) Ghana as part of the implementation of the She Leads project when she presented on the activities carried out by the Queen mothers’ group during the period under review.
The CARD-Ghana, as part of the She Leads project implementation, provided funding to its project associates – Change Agents, Queen mothers group and networks – to conduct some activities geared towards achieving the objectives of the project.
Traditional leaders, representatives of Change Agents at the project communities, and government and Non-governmental institutions, among others, attended the meeting to assess the progress and challenges of the project implementation and the way forward.
Pognaa Mumuni, who is also the Wa Municipal Girl Child Coordinator at the Ghana Education Service, accused some mothers of being accomplices in some cases of teenage pregnancies recorded as they were aware of the immoral activities of their girl children but failed to admonish them against that.
“When a girl gets pregnant and the case comes to my office, at the end, the girl’s mother always has a hand in it. The man says he has been giving money to the girl’s mother.
“You the mother too, you know your daughter is in school and you will allow her to have boy lovers and when she becomes pregnant you will now pretend to be innocent”, she explained.
Pognaa Mumuni, therefore, indicated that they would sensitise the market women on the need to protect their girl children from engaging in such activities, including travelling to the southern sector in search of greener pastures, which sometimes led them to teenage and unwanted pregnancies.
Madam Abdul-Rahaman, the Executive Director of CARD-Ghana, noted that during the quarter under review, the project had chalked a lot of successes, including helping to change some negative social norms in society such as girls’ participation in leadership and decision-making in schools.
She added that the project also helped terminate a forced marriage move in the Chegli community where a girl was being forced into marriage against her will and commanded the chief of the community for his intervention.
Mr Abdul-Rahaman Ahmed, a member of the Change Agent team at the Chegli community, explained that the survivor of the forced marriage was currently learning a trade and thanked the CARD-Ghana and its partners for the intervention to save the girl from the attempted forced marriage.
The She Leads project is being implemented by a consortium of organisations in the country with the Plan International Ghana, leading its implementation in the Upper West region in partnership with the CARD-Ghana.
