Unable to Get to the Heart of the Matter: Kayaye in Ghana

The Ghanaian government’s dealing with kayaye displays a problematic approach that I feel permeates much of government and non-government development in Ghana.  They simply cannot or will not get to the heart of the matter.  For those of you who may not know, kayaye refers the work of porters who aid passengers with their loads as they are alighting from public transportation, preparing to travel, or shopping in the market places.  In short, they help people carry things with the expectation of a tip.  Many of the people who take up this occupation are from Ghana’s northern regions and migrate to the southern urban centers (i.e. Accra, Kumasi, Takoradi, etc.) where the population and wealth are greater.   Many of them are children, and many of them are girls. With no family in these cities and very little consistent income, these kayaye workers often make their homes on the streets or in make-shift housing.   The areas where they stay are most frequently characterized by crime, pollution, disease, and overpopulation.  In Accra, this area is referred to by most every Ghanaian as Sodom and Gomorrah.

In an attempt to better their situation and reduce crime and disease, the government has taken on a number of initiatives to support those performing kayaye work.  They have attempted to sponsor vocational training for these workers—to provide them with a more marketable skill set that could potentially get them off the street and involved in a more reliable form of work.  Government officials have also discussed demolishing the make-shift communities in which these workers live and relocating them to government-subsidized accommodations on the outskirts of town.  Implementing such a task, however, would be extremely daunting.  Not only are there thousands of kayaye workers in a number of cities, the birth rates are also high in these communities, and the number who would actually agree to move away from their only means of subsistence are few.  The former initiative is far more realistic, but it still leaves me wondering if the government is truly trying to eradicate kayaye, because the heart of the matter is not in these urban centers; it’s in the hometowns of these workers.

I believe if the government truly wanted to deal with the issue of kayaye in our country, they would address the issues that these workers first faced before deciding to migrate to the cities for kayaye work.  Very few kayaye workers were provided with even basic education.  There were either no schools in their hometown, or no teachers to teach in these schools.  Putting on a school uniform and walking around a classroom with no teacher for six hours would seem a waste of time to anyone; so, not knowing of the conditions, it is often even the parents who encourage these individuals to travel and take up kayaye work.  There are also no jobs in these communities.  Unless they are willing to do the work of their grandfather’s, there is no other work available to them within their town; they have to travel outside.  As much as I am a proponent for agricultural development in Ghana, not everyone is meant to be a farmer.  How can every single person in an entire town be expected to take up the same occupation?  Lastly, it is the thoughts, or should I say wonders, of amenities that drive many to the urban areas, and this is something that I can personally attest too.  We are all human, living on the same earth.  We know there is a place where water runs from the tap.  We know there is a place we where can see shiny new cars and hundreds of street lights, and we want to see them.  So, we go to the places where we know these things are, and we try to survive there.  So, if the government truly wants to rid our country of kayaye, they should do more than address the current population of kayaye workers.  They need to address the population of future kayaye workers.  More specifically, we need schools, teachers, jobs, and electricity and water would not be so bad either.