CARITAS GHANA, a charity organisation under the Catholic Secretariat, has held a day's dialogue with key stakeholders in northern Ghana in Tamale, to fine-tune workable strategies to facilitate and support resettlement and reintegration of vulnerable populations affected by COVID-19.

The meeting, which sought to collate contributions from the stakeholders to make a strong case to respond positively to minimising migration of children and young women to urban centres to stay in the street and work to raise income, charged Assemblies in the north to create employable avenues to encourage young people to stay and work in their communities.

Various NGOs, Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies staff, Civil Society Organisations, charitable institutions, media organisations, returnee head porters, popularly called 'kayayees' who have acquired some skills through CARITAS GHANA skills training support programmes were present at the meeting to dialogue.

The programme, which is funded by Star Ghana Foundation, is expected to come out with a road map on feasible measures to encourage more kayayees to accept to acquire skills and return home to the north to make decent living.

Reverend Sister Olivia Umoh, Coordinator in charge of the Kumasi Street Children Project, expressed worry about constant pressures from parents on the children to get into the Street for greener postures, and said the success in getting children out from the streets was greatly dependent on parents' willingness to accept their roles as guardians and discourage their children, especially girls from venturing into the streets.

Sister Umoh noted that poverty, social injustice, and other social factors accounted for most of the cases involving children and young women migrating to bigger cities in search of jobs with their attendant consequences, and gave horrible accounts of the dangers these children were exposed to, while on the streets.

According to her, the children were exposed to various dangers, including beating, cheating by their patrons, exposure to social vices, and unplanned pregnancies and among others, and said to discourage such canker, it was necessary to have a united front as communities to positively respond to these cases.

Mr Samuel Zan Akolga, Executive Secretary of CARITAS GHANA, said the issue of returnee kayeyees was of grave concern to his outfit and communities where these children came from, indicating that it was important to get stakeholders to appreciate the urgent need for a dialogue to adopt measures to address these concerns.
Mr Akolgo encouraged media practitioners' participating in the meeting to make varied inputs into the discussions and said there was emphasis on media, because they were exposed to various community encounters and capable of bringing other issues to the table for discussions.

Some representatives of assemblies made presentations on some progress made so far in supporting returnee Kayayees to reintegrate in various communities since the outbreak of COVID-19, and their return home.

Ghana recorded its first COVID-19 case in March, and in some few weeks, the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was compelled to put in place some restrictions on movement which forced most of the kayayees to return home without any skills.

This informed CARITAS GHANA to seek funding to support the training of these returnees hence the dialogue meeting to fill in the gaps to respond positively to the pressing needs of these returnees.