Ministry to support women in Assembly election

Page 13, July 2, 2010
Story: Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah

THE Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs will continue to support women who will stand for the district assembly elections scheduled for September this year, the sector minister, Mrs Juliana Azumah-Mensah, has said.
In line with that the ministry has developed a strategy paper which is aimed at securing support for women’s participation in decision-making as well increasing their participation at the local level, and ultimately to the parliamentary level.
Mrs Azumah-Mensah made these known when she appeared before the House to answer a question posed to her by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Lower West Akim, Ms Gifty Klenam, on the floor of Parliament on Wednesday.
Ms Klenam had asked the minister what special provision the ministry was making to encourage more women to contest in the forthcoming district level elections.
The minister told the House that to achieve that objective a committee comprising members from both governmental and non-governmental organisations had been constituted to plan activities outlined in the strategy paper in the preparation towards the District Level Elections.
She noted that the 2006 District Level Elections demonstrated that when women were organised, they were better placed to become confident with their delivery, explaining that review meetings and interactions after the elections revealed that there was the need to sustain the momentum and build on what had been done to enable more women to occupy decision-making positions as administrators, assembly members, counsellors, among others.
Mrs Azumah-Mensah said the ministry was targeting 20 women in each district for special training to enable them to effectively campaign for the upcoming elections to double the number of women in the district assemblies.
She said as a first step the ministry was teaming up with other ministries, departments and agencies in addition to civil society organisations to advocate and sensitise the general public to the importance of women’s inclusion in the district level elections.
Mrs Azumah-Mensah said that the ministry would produce jingles in English, Twi, Nzema, Ewe,and Dagbani to be played on local FM stations in all the ten regions to educate the people, explaining that the ministry would lobby the FM stations for free air time and slots for the sensitisation programme.
She said the regional directors of the ministry were expected to work with gender desk officers and district assemblies in their respective regions to identify women for the exercise, adding that the regional level training would target 50 selected women while at the district level 20 women would be targeted.
Mr Azumah-Mensah said it was expected that the district assemblies would sponsor the trainings, and that the ministry would also source sponsorship from the private sector, corporate bodies, development partners and the general public.