The Coordinator of the Twin-Cities in Sustainable Partnership Project, Mr Isaac Aidoo, says illicit use of drugs, teenage pregnancy, child prostitution and gender-based violence is gradually increasing each year in the Metropolis.
He noted these social vices continued to deprive some teenage mothers of the opportunity to increase their knowledge base, skills, and capacity to work and earn income to escape poverty.
He revealed this at a stakeholders’ engagement on community campaigns on youth-oriented and gender-sensitive topics at Sekondi in the Western Region.
He added that issues of domestic and gender-based violence did not help citizens to attain their desired standards of living.
Meanwhile, statistics from the Metro Education Department of Assembly showed in the 2016- 2020 report that 16 of the absentees did not write the examination because they were pregnant.
At the Senior High School ( SHS), the metro education report (2016-2020), revealed that out of 33,041 candidates who were registered, 94 candidates did not sit for the WASSCE due to similar attitudes.
Mr Aidoo said conscious efforts must be made to ensure that the ‘gender gap in planning’ was reduced and that, the concerns and aspirations of women, teenage mothers and children should be integrated into the planning process.
“It is against this background that the Twin-Cities in Sustainable Partnership project designed a component to help address these challenges.
The Twin-Cities in Sustainable Partnership Project is a 3-year project being implemented in the cities of Sekondi-Takoradi (Ghana) and Palermo (Italy) funded by the European Union (EU).
“It is being implemented under the EU’s “Local Authorities: Partnerships for Sustainable Cities Programme” launched in 2019. The overall objective of the three (3) year project dubbed, ‘Twin-Cities in Sustainable Partnership’ is to promote a Sustainable and Integrated Urban Development in the two cities”, he explained.
The Project Coordinator said the initiative would contribute to enhancing urban management by addressing challenges such as urban sprawl, climate change, poverty, and exclusion.
He hoped that the engagement would provide a platform for stakeholders to design strategies and interventions to support the victims and protect and preserve children and the youth for the future of the Metropolis and the country at large.
