Wednesday, 22nd June, 2022

DAILY ANALYST
Wednesday, 22nd June, 2022 Page 7
Women/Feminist
Scholars have
been encouraged
to turn their
research into
advocacy tools to influence public
policy to advance efforts toward
achieving inclusion and gender
equality in Ghana.
Speaking at a roundtable
discussion on the theme:
"Academia Meets Policy – The
Role of Feminist Scholars,"
Professor Jarpa Dawuni, a
Fulbright Specialist under the U.S.
Embassy-administered Fulbright
Program and a Democracy and
Development (D&D) Fellow at
discussion was an opportunity for
CDD-Ghana to build partnerships
with women scholars who can
become consultants for future
collaborative work in research,
policy, and advocacy. It also
sought to provide feminist
scholars with opportunities and
a platform to engage in public
scholarship and advocacy through
their research.
Professor Nana Akua
Anyidoho, Director of the Centre
for Social Policy Studies (CSPS)
at the University of Ghana,
attributed the inability of
scholars to be activists to existing
prejudices.
“We have different pressures
and motivations because as
much as feminist researchers
would want our research to have
an impact and to make reallife
differences, we also have
the pressures of responding to
what our academic environment
requires of us,” she said. “I’ve had
colleagues who have almost been
penalized for the fact that they
NECPAD Calls for effective labour
inspection to stop child trafficking
Mr. Paul Asamoah
Kukwaw, the
Executive Director
of Network for
Community
Planning and Development
(NECPAD), has called for effective
labour inspection to curtail child
trafficking.
He called on the labour
Department to go beyond
inspecting only the formal sector
institutions and to monitor the
informal sector organisations,
which were the major scene for
child trafficking.
Mr Asamoah was speaking at
a day’s workshop on Child labour
organised in partnership with the
Labour Department and NECPAD.
The workshop was on the
theme “Sustainable Nets- Building
a sustainable Protection Network
to eliminate Child Labour as a
result of Human Trafficking on
the Volta Lake.”
The partners are
implementing a 30-month
interventions dubbed: ” The
Sustainable Nets Project”,
which seeks to contribute to the
elimination of all worst forms of
child labour, arising from human
trafficking in the fishing sector of
the country.
Mr Asamoah said, “Trafficking
occurs in many areas, but largely
in our economy, trafficking occurs
in the informal sector and so that
is the call for formalizing the
informal sector, ” he said.
He, however, said that the
entire informal sector could not
be legalized because there were
more threshold issues that needed
to be addressed.
“More inspectors are needed
in the labour Department to
conduct series of inspections in
the informal sector,” he added.
He urged government, through
the Ministry of Employment and
the Ghana Center for Democratic
Development (CDD-Ghana),
emphasized the urgent need
for academia and civil society
organizations (CSOs) to work
collaboratively to expand research
into untapped areas within the
gender and human rights space to
awaken interest and shape public
policy.
The event brought together
gender activists, women/feminist
scholars, and media practitioners
to explore opportunities and
avenues for collaboration to
achieve the mutually beneficial
goal of gender equality.
Specifically, the roundtable
Labour Relations, to resource the
labour Department with more
trained and enlightened labour
inspectors, who would go to the
informal sector and conduct these
labour inspections.
“This needs to be done because
the Department complains of a
limited number of staff, and we
need to enhance their capacity,
their numbers in order for them
to do effective inspections,” he
said.
“We are looking at building
a network, eliminating child
labour, which results from human
trafficking and focusing on the
volta lake. Even though we are
focusing on the Volta Lake, we
are also mindful of where these
children are sourced from and
their destination,” he stated.
The Executive Director
emphasised that due to the
prevalence of child labour among
the informal sector such as cocoa,
mining, and fishing, NECPAD
had organised the project in six
regions.
The Regions are Greater
Accra, Oti, Volta, Western, Bono
East, and the Central to provide
interventions to aid in the
eradication of child labor and
trafficking.
He said NECPAD and its
partners had created awareness
about child labour, trafficking,
and advocacy in 30 communities
using community radios and
information centres.
Mr Asamoah noted that one of
the tangible things on the project
had to do with what they called
“sustainable livelihood scheme.”
He said they had identified
over a hundred children who were
into child labour or trafficking
on the volta lake and had offered
them the “sustainable livelihood
scheme” to update themselves in
a skill so they did not go back to
Turning Research Findings Into
Policies On Gender Equality
the Lake.
“We provided them with
counseling, reintegration and sent
them to their families instead
of putting them in shelters or
feeding them, we decided to give
them skills in apprenticeship and
other vocational training,” he
added.
He urged NGOs, who
attempted to rescue victims of
child labour and trafficking to
desist from it as it was the sole
responsibility of law enforcement
agencies and social welfare.
He encouraged them to rather
liaise with law enforcement
agencies because there could be
things that appeared as child
trafficking, but they may not be
one
Ḣe said in the case of human
trafficking, a conduct, means and
goal had to be established, and it
was the law enforcement agencies
who could establish those facts.
He also encouraged them to
take advantage of the impressive
units within the Ghana police,
and anti-human traffic of the
Ministry of Gender and Children,
and Social Protection to work
together and bring perpetrators
to book.
were activists as well as scholars
and researchers. Somehow, there
is this notion that you being
an activist compromises your
objectivity in some way so there
is this prejudice that we have to
deal with.”
On her part, Dr. Wunpini
Fatimata Mohammed,
Assistant Professor at the
College of Journalism and Mass
Communication, University
of Georgia, highlighted the
importance of sharing research
findings with the media. She
noted that although social media
is a widely used medium, women/
feminist scholars should consider
using all forms of media – both
traditional and social media
– to reach those who may be
disadvantaged due to the digital
divide.
Speaking on opportunities for
turning research into policy and
advocacy tools, Dr. Kojo Asante,
Director of Advocacy and Policy
Engagement at CDD-Ghana, noted
there is a lot of data that have
not yet been mined, analyzed,
or utilized. He maintained that
it is essential for advocacy to be
backed by research and stressed
the importance of making
research findings accessible to all.
Ms. Regina Amanfo-Tetteh,
No Covid deaths recorded
in Ghana since March 2022;
active cases cross 1000 mark
Ghana’s COVID-19 cases
have been recording
astronomical rises
within the last few
weeks, crossing the
1000 mark this week.
The active Coronavirus
cases were less than 400 at the
beginning of June 2022.
As of June 2, 2022, the active
case count was 370. It increased
to 401 on June 5 and jumped to
837 on June 9.
At the moment, active
COVID-19 cases in the country
stand at 1,064.
As usual, the Greater Accra
Region leads with 923 active
cases and is distantly followed
by the Ashanti Region with 47
cases.
The last time a COVIDrelated
death was recorded was
Lead for CDD-Ghana's Human
Rights Desk, listed women’s
involvement in inter and intraparty
politics and their influence
on policy decisions; the future
value of work for women postpandemic
recovery; sustainability
of women’s agenda in the face of
dwindling funding for CSOs and
the shrinking of civic spaces as
some research areas CDD-Ghana,
the Centre for Gender Studies
and Advocacy (CEGENSA) at the
University of Ghana and the CSPS
can collaborate on to inform
advocacy.
Dr. Deborah Atoborah,
Director for CEGENSA said the
Centre’s core mandate is to ensure
gender equity features in policy
and democratic governance
and permeates many aspects of
Ghanaian life. She thus pledged
their commitment to bridging the
gap between academia and civil
society; while broadening the
scope of gender research.
“We seem to be experiencing
gender fatigue because we have
focused our work around certain
issues to the neglect of other key
issues. When we broaden the
scope, the element of fatigue will
begin to reduce and we will then
have a whole lot of issues to work
with,” she said.
in March 2022. Since then, the
cumulative death figure has
remained at 1,445.
Cumulatively, 163,332
COVID-19 cases have been
recorded in Ghana since the
virus hit the shores of the
country in March 2020.
There have been 160,823
recoveries since March 2020.
On Covid vaccination,
according to the Ghana Health
Service, 16,396,820 doses have
been administered.
The figure for persons fully
vaccinated is 6,950,095 while
those who have received one
dose stand at 10,223,563.
The Ghana Health Service on
its Covid dashboard notes that
1,006,920 persons have received
their 1st booster dose.