The poor and homeless in the Suame Municipality of the Ashanti Region have accused Assembly authorities of disregarding their needs in their development plans for the Municipality.
They, therefore, urged the Suame Municipal Assembly to factor their needs into the plans of the Assembly for them to also have access to a fair share of essential social amenities in the Municipality.
The vagrants made the demand at a sensitisation workshop organised by Crime Check Foundation (CCF), on the bye-laws of the Suame Municipal Assembly at Suame.
The programme, which formed part of the implementation of CCF’s Decriminalising Vagrancy Laws and Advocacy project, seeks to increase citizens’ knowledge on assemblies bye-laws in order to reduce offences, arrests, fines and imprisonment of poor and voiceless citizens under the laws.
The sensitisation is also expected to create an enabling environment for vagrants (the homeless, street hawkers, head porters, vendors, truck pushers, market women, artisans, and other identifiable and vulnerable groups) to know, claim and exercise their rights and responsibilities in Ghana.
The project is supported by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).
The vagrants noted that, the lack of some basic amenities and the difficulty in accessing those that are available was because they were not considered when the Assembly initiated the plans for development.
According to them, the situation accounts for the harassment, arrests, imposition of fines on them and their imprisonment for flouting the bye-laws which frown upon activities they undertake and places they occupy.
This, they said, is as a result of their inability to access social amenities.
“Lands meant for refuse sites, playgrounds, pavements and parks have all been sold by land owners, and the Assembly cannot exonerate itself from blame. This is because, this affluent individuals secure permits for any development from the Assembly and they don’t care about us,” they said.
They stressed, “If there is no place for us to dump refuse, cars to park we will do it anyhow and that will be lawlessness. There is no sense in arresting us if we do not have a lorry,” a representative of the driver unions quizzed.
They therefore entreated the Assembly to include the concerns of the poor in the development plans of the SMA.
The Deputy Director of Prison and Officer-in-Charge of the Kumasi Central Prisons, Asamoah Fenning, acknowledged the importance of Decriminalising Vagrancy Laws and Advocacy project which he said showed the commitment of CCF to push for effective justice delivery for citizens.
He said the project will reduce the rate at which citizens violate these laws and get arrested and fined or imprisoned due to their ignorance of the law.
“Most of our parents, drivers, truck pushers, hawkers and the ordinary person on the street do not know the laws that regulate affairs within the Assembly. As a result, many, including single mothers who are selling in the streets, fall victim of the law.”
He urged the public to support CCF’s initiatives to decongest Ghana’s Prisons.
“The prisons are full. For instance, the Kumasi Central Prison, which was built for four hundred inmates, now holds more than two thousand of them, an increase of more than four hundred percent. The conditions are terrible and inmates are fed on GHS 1.80 a day.”
The sensitisation was a rare opportunity for citizens, as they wondered why the Assembly had never organised a sensitization workshop for them on its own until the CCF-OSIWA intervention.
