Challenges facing migrants to the cities(24/01/09)

THE challenges that face the large number of young men and women who migrate from other parts of the country to Accra and other cities for non-existent jobs are enormous.
Some of the migrants travel from parts of the three northern regions, the Western, Eastern, Central and Ashanti regions to the city to seek ‘greener pastures’.
Most of them, faced with the realities of city life, resort to all manner of activities to make ends meet. They all come with one reason — to make some money to feed themselves and their families back home. Majority of them come from the rural areas but there are some who move to Accra from other cities.
That is why Accra is spilling over with porters, cobblers, hawkers and petty traders, some of whom operate on the streets, pavements and even on foot bridges to create congestion in the city.
Rural-urban migration causes stress on such amenities as schools, hospitals, accommodation, road and sanitation facilities.
Female porters, popularly known as 'Kayayei', normally face accommodation problems and are exposed to sexual harassment which lead to unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), not to mention the dreaded HIV/AIDS.
A porter at the Agbogbloshie Market in Accra, Adiza Yakubu, who came to Accra four years ago at age 15, told the Daily Graphic that she came from a village in the north to work in order to fend for her parents and her four siblings back in her home town.
Currently aged 19, she said she had two children from different casual relations. According to her, she could no longer trace the men to take care of the children, who were aged three and one.
She sleeps with her children and her friends in front of shops at the Agbogbloshie Market, since she does not earn enough to feed herself and the children and save towards accommodation.
Paa Yaw, who works with Zoomlion Ghana Limited, is also a migrant from the Eastern Region who came to Accra to find a job to fend for himself and his mother in the village.
“I came to Accra because there was no work in my village. I heeded the advice from my friends to come here and work to get some money to feed myself and my old mother,” he said.
He said if factories were established in the rural areas, he would go back there to work, since life in the city was too stressful for him.
Kwesi Aboagye, a cobbler from the Ashanti Region, said he came to Accra to work to get money to cater for himself.
He said he came to Accra in 2007 and had since been staying with a friend at Tabora in the Okaikoi North sub-metro.
Vida Asante, a 23-year-old second-hand clothes seller at Makola who hails from the Ashanti Region, said she came to Accra when she was 17 to live and work with her aunt, who was a trader.
She said at the age of 19 she left her aunt’s house because she used to maltreat her. She had, since then, been living with friends to work to earn some money from selling second-hand clothing to rent a single room for herself.
Vida called on the government to create more job opportunities in strategic places and across the country to stop the youth from migrating to the city to seek for greener pastures.