The menace of street children in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region is getting out of control, and the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) is doing its best to get the children out of the street.
A task force led by the Chief Executive Officer of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) Samuel Pyne, together with the Social Welfare department and the Metropolitan task force picked children from the streets in a swoop
The task force after taking the street children through medical screening discovered that ten out of fifteen child beggars tested positive for HIV, Tuberculosis, and COVID-19.
The children were citizens brought in from Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger to beg for alms along streets and major traffic intersections.
The KMA Mayor, Sam Pyne speaking to Kumasi-based Abusua FM said the issue of street beggars had become challenging as no private home was tooled to accept the children.
He said “We needed to deal with them by taking them to a private home but do you think they will be glad to take such children having these conditions? They do not have any isolation or holding centers to deal with these cases.”
He stated that the KMA was in constant talk with the Regional Security Council to lobby for a state-owned shelter in Kumasi since the Kumasi Children’s Home now falls under the jurisdiction of the Asokore Mampong Municipal Assembly.
Sam Pyne noted that “If you care to know, we don’t even have a shelter in Kumasi now. What we used to have in the Kumasi Children’s Home, has been taken over by Asokore Mampong because of the demarcation in the creation of that municipality.”
He also called on the government to collaborate with the various embassies in Ghana to evacuate the growing number of foreign street children.
