OVER SIX HUNDRED CHILDREN AT GNANI WITCHES CAMP NOT IN SCHOOL

An estimated 630 children of school going age at the Gnani witches camp in the Yendi Municipality in the Northern Region are currently not in school as a result of their parents’ inability to cater for their education.

Their mothers, numbering over 200 and suspected to be witches have found Gnani as a home where they have been living for many years ever since they were banished and ostracized by their husbands, families and community members.

The only few children who go to school outside the camp travel for about two miles away from home due to lack of educational infrastructure at Tingdang where the camp is located.

Ahmed Mahamud, 28, who has lived all his life at the witches’ camp, told a group of human rights journalists who accompanied the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ActionAid International on a tour in the area, that he is an illiterate because the Tingdang community lacked schools.

Some of the alleged witches including Mma Martha Neindow shared their sad stories with the journalists and concluded that they found themselves at the camp because of false accusations leveled against them by their own people.

The alleged witches commended ActionAid-Ghana and its development partners like Songtaba for alleviating their plight in diverse ways and appealed for educational infrastructure and skills training to enable them make some money and send their children to school.

The CEO of ActionAid International, Joana Kerr, described as generally unacceptable the situation in which the inmates had found themselves at the camp which she noted was borne out of hatred and jealousy.

She advised people living in the affected communities to stop the false accusations against particularly impoverished women and their children in society and rather focus on creating opportunities that would improve their general wellbeing.

Madam Kerr therefore called on the media to shift public opinion from the perception of witchcraft by helping to build a society that will be free of such injustices.

Later at a meeting prior to a dinner organized in her honour by the Northern Regional Minister, Madam Joana Kerr requested that the Northern Regional Coordinating Council should focus its partnership drive with Action-Aid Ghana on four thematic areas.

She mentioned the areas as abolishing the culture of witchcraft against women and children, championing the education for all concept, increasing to 40% women participation at all stages of decision making processes especially at the grassroots level as well as granting women access to lands.

Meanwhile, Mr. Moses Bukari Mabengba commended Action-Aid Ghana for its socio-economic interventions in the Northern Region over the years and pledged the RCC’s support to make the organization achieve its aims and objectives.