The Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs has held a two-days training workshop in Bo on Gender budgeting for Local Councils. The two days workshop was facilitated alongside the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The training with its 20 participants drawn from the Local Councils and 10 drawn from key stakeholders in gender issue will see the participants trained in the preparation of budgets, and issues concerning gender in Sierra Leone. The training theme is “Gender and Budgeting.” Opening the training, the Chairman and Chief Administrator Bo District Council Josiah Bangali stated that this “is an important gathering on capacity building on gender budgeting.” Over the years, he explained, “tradition has put women at the back.” which he said “has been seen as bad” as “there is nothing a man can do that a woman cannot do.” On budget planning, he maintained that it was not all about money rather that it was about ‘planning, implementation and financing.’ UNFPA representative Mrs. Isatu Kajue registered her organization’s unwavering support to women issues particularly through the Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs. Her organization she emphasized was committed to “promoting gender equality.” She defined gender as “What the society ascribes…what the society determines about the life of both men and women.” The issue of gender she maintained was a “specific tool, which if understood better could help us better in our communities.” The Bo City Chief Administrator William Alpha stated that the “Local Government Act of 2004 is not gender sensitive” but “mainstreaming gender into the decentralization process. He accentuated that there is need for a revision of the Act and the giving of 30% representation to women. He stated that “women are grossly unrepresented in the local Councils. He also suggested that all Local Councils should have a ‘Gender Desk.’However, he accepted that the fight of gender is very compounding as there is no accurate “data on gender.” This he noted is a key component in this fight. But education for the girl child he stressed was a key essential in the fight.Delivering her keynote speech the Coordinator Gender Budgeting Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs Mrs. Fatu Kargbo expressed her delight in seeing men passionately “speaking on gender.”
She revealed that her Ministry was the least funded in the country. Removing salaries and other office needs financing from the government allocated fund to her Ministry usually leaves her ministry with no money to undertake any programme she said. In fact, she confidently asserted that the “world budgets are not gender friendly” which she said leaves the women at the mercy of the ego-stricken men. “No, men should not plan for us; rather we should do it together. There is need for a change of attitude.” She said that it has become a habit that the suggestions of the woman is not always taken serious, and called for a reverse of that. Concluding, she opined that “gender budgeting can improve the world.”
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