By: Nyima Sillah
Fatou Kinteh, Minister for Women’s Affairs, Children and Social Welfare (MoWCW), has vowed that the budget allocated to her ministry is not enough.
“The money given to my ministry by the National Assembly is not enough. We had a meeting with the select committee on gender and made it clear to them that what allocated is not enough,” she told GRTS news recently.
She added: “They should remember that this is a new ministry and we need to do a lot of work, it is a big ministry that is dealing with women, children, people with disability, the elderly and the vulnerable groups. If you remove that from the population who is left, nothing absolutely so it is a big ministry and we have a big task ahead of us, so we should be given budget that can take care of our work.”
According to her, her ministry is working so hard in the area of sensitizations especially during this 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence and also the sensitization has been going on all levels starting from the policy makers, religious leaders, community members, and security officers and there has been huge impact.
She pointed out that change is difficult and when making a change considering a social norm which is different from culture and society.
“There is physical violence that leads to sexual harassment but what is clear is that, we have to make sure that we sensitize people and let them know this is harmful so they can stop. If not, these harassments are going to continue and that is not good for the health and welfare of women and children”, she said.
However, she said before the police officers don’t take GBV cases seriously because they consider it as a matter outside police intervention but now they have seen more and more cases reported to the police.
She also said despite the report there is still low prosecution because people withdraw the cases from the police, stressing that the fact that they are reporting, “it means we are making a great achievement.”