The Members of Parliament representing Constituency 029 Kono district, Honourable Rebecca Yei Kamara has disclosed that government cannot empower broken or battered women. She made this disclosure while contributing on the second allotted day debate on the 2021 Appropriation Act, with specific reference to the government allocation to the Gender and Children Affairs. The Honourable Member however questioned the allocation to the Gender Ministry, describing it as ‘not encouraging’ considering the percentage of women and children across the country.
Honourable Rebecca citied Cluster five in the 2021 Appropriation Act, relating to women empowerment where the Minister of Finance stated that as part of Government’s efforts to address women empowerment, and issues affecting children and persons with disability, Government is allocating Le4.0 billion from the recurrent budget, to the Ministry of Gender and Children Affairs. According to the Finance Minister, of this amount, Le3 billion is allocated to Gender and Children’s programs, an amount of Le1 billion to the Children’s Commission.
“From the domestic capital budget, Le5 billion is allocated to the Women’s Economic Empowerment Fund and Le1 billion for the prevention of gender-based violence,” he said, disclosing that an amount of Le1.53 billion is allocated for devolved functions to Social Welfare, while Le1.9 billion is provided for devolved gender and children related services.
The Member of Parliament questioned the amount of women that will benefit from the women’s empowerment project when the fund is tagged at economic empowerment, stating that there are more women at the tertiary institutions that require empowerment.
Hon. Rebecca disclosed that the government is talking about establishing safe homes at the regional and district level when in actual fact the Regional Gender offices are not fully in operations due to limited resources. Commenting on the issue of Gender and Sexual Base cases, she disclosed they are on the increase across the country, stating that she was expecting the 2021 budget to have an allocation of special line relating to the establishment of a forensic lab particularly so with President Bio’s interest on the issue rather than waiting for donor support.
According to her with the availability of a forensic lab it is very easy to prove someone guilty of sexual offensive cases. She expressed dissatisfaction on the youth in car wash project, which makes no provision for women inclusion. She called on the Government to consider enrolling more female nurses that are across the country working as volunteers into the payroll system, as a way of creating job opportunity for women.
By Alhaji Manika Kamara