Crime Check Foundation has facilitated the release of seized human hair weaves (weave-on) for a hawker, Comfort Asiamah.
The hair weaves of the poor single mother were confiscated by the Ashaiman Municipal Assembly Task Force.
Worried Ms. Asiamah narrated her story to a CCF monitoring team during one of its routine monitoring on effects of the bye-laws of Ashaiman Municipal Assembly on vagrants and other poor persons as part of the implementation of CCF-OSIWA “Decriminalizing Vagrancy Laws and Advocacy” project on Monday, 6th December 2021.
According to Comfort, she was selling the products within the central business area of Ashaiman when a lady bought some of the products in front of a bank and gave her One Hundred Ghana cedis.
Comfort said because she did not have a change, she left the goods with the customer while she went to change the money into smaller denominations.
The poor hawker narrated that when she returned, the customer told her that the Municipal Assembly Task Force had taken her goods away.
The distressed lady then went to the office of the Task Force where she was asked to pay a fine of One hundred Ghana cedis because she was “selling at an unauthorized area”.
Ms. Asiamah, said, she could not afford the fine since she had not made enough sales and she had actually credited the products to enable her fend for her little child, but the Task Force was not convinced.
She complained to the CCF monitoring team who led her to the office of the Task Force. The team consisted of the Project Manager for CCF, Cosmos Akorli, and a Community Monitoring Team member for the Municipality, Mr. Emmanuel Agbevenu who is also a Unit Committee Member in the area.
Cosmos and Emmanuel pleaded with the head of the Task Force, Mr. Abu to release the goods to the poor lady since she could not pay the fine due to her level of deprivation.
They emphasized that Ms. Asiamah is just one of the many women who are facing the effects of extreme inequality, vulnerability, and exclusion due to poverty, and lack of education.
The team added that “Comfort lacked knowledge of the Assembly bye-laws”, an issue the Municipal Prosecutor mentioned to the CCF team in an earlier meeting, same day. Thankfully after some deliberations with the Assembly, the head of the Task Force ordered the release of the goods to Comfort, though reluctantly.
In an interview with Comfort after she retrieved her goods, she expressed gratitude to CCF and OSIWA for ensuring the release of her confiscated goods. She noted that her “main worry when the goods were seized was how she would be able to raise some money for her child a few days to Christmas”.
About the CCF-OSIWA Project:
Since May 2021, CCF has been implementing the “Decriminalizing Vagrancy Laws and Advocacy” project in 12 MMDAs in Greater Accra, Central and Ashanti Regions. The main aim of the project is to create an enabling environment for the homeless/vagrants to know, claim and exercise their rights to end criminalization of homeless persons and other categories of people affected by vagrancy laws in Ghana. The monitoring of the effects of vagrancy laws under the project seeks to identify peculiar issues that affect vagrants and other poor persons in the implementation of the Assembly bye-laws and other vagrancy laws that appear to affect the poor disproportionately. This intervention is consistent with SDG #16.3: Access to Justice for All by 2030 and a recent opinion ruling on ‘vagrancy laws’ delivered by the African Courts on Human and People’s Rights.
About OSIWA:
Established in 2000, OSIWA is a grant-making and advocacy organization focused on equality, justice, democratic governance, human rights and knowledge generation. It is part of the global network of Open Society Foundations spread across 37 countries around the world.
