Head porters are returning to some principal streets of the city of Accra and their numbers keep increasing as the days go by.
The Ministries environs is one of the hotspots with a huge population of these porters growing by the day.
Popularly known as “Kayayei” and mostly women, they live along the roads not alone but with their new borns and other children that assist in nursing the babies when the mothers go out to make money.
Their living on the streets does not only bring sanitation problems to the city but it is a dent on the image of the country as it poses security threats.
Observation by the Ghana News Agency (GNA) has revealed that their children, many of whom are babies, toddlers, adolescents and teenagers often play by the busy streets.
An eye witness accounts show that the porters, who do almost everything by the roadside including, sleeping especially during the day, have some of their children knocked down by fast moving vehicles when they attempt to cross the roads to the opposite sides.
Speaking to GNA, Madam Amina Salifu, in her early 50s, who happens to be one of the eldest among one such gathering of kayayei, said it was poverty that had driven them to the streets of Accra.
“We have plenty of food in Belebia-Walewale but the money to use to prepare soup or stew as well as prepare balanced diet for the family is not available and that our children are tired of eating the same meal all the time”.
Amina said they also needed money to put their children into school as they would run away from their classrooms when they were starving.
“Though we don’t have a decent place to lay our heads in the night and we are at the mercy of the weather, rain, bedbugs and mosquitoes, some of us are able to save some money and send home from time to time to support the family.
“We have been on the street for some time now but we go back home as and when necessary to take care of the rest of the family left behind,” she stated.
Juliana Baani, a-21-year Junior High School leaver, dropped out of school because the family could no longer support her to further her education.
She was later impregnated by a young man and now she is nursing a six-month old baby, so she had to travel with the baby to Accra to make a living.
It is Juliana’s dream to acquire a skill in dressmaking or hair dressing to continue with her life. Ajara Issah, a very vocal and open person, said she and her husband have two boys and a girl and the proceeds from three sacks of maize in its season could not take care of their family, so she had to risk her life to make the family a little more comfortable.
“I make between GH¢3.00 and GH¢20.00 daily and that is what I use to feed myself and my baby, f use some of it for the washroom, buy toiletries, among other expenses.
Mr Moses Ibrahim, an executive member of the “Kayayie” Association, Tema-Station, who chanced on the reporter’s conversation with some of the women said, he was not happy how new people kept coming in when they were struggling to deal with those already in Accra.
“No amount of persuasion is making them change their minds to go back to their hometowns. “But I and the rest of our colleagues are doing our best to influential and assist those who are willing to return,” he said.
Another called on the President to fix their problem as they voted him into power.
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