News:
January 12, 2012
The Deputy Majority Leader, Rashid Pelpuo has called for the formulation of a code of conduct for prayer camps across the country to regulate their activities.
According to him, the prayers camps where people go in search of spiritual solutions to their problems rather turn out to be a place where they rather go through a lot of agony due to the dehumanizing treatment meted out to them.
His call comes following the rescue of a 16- year old Junior High School (JHS) student by officials of the Department of Social Welfare and the Kwesimintsim District Police who had been isolated for four years because she was declared a witch by the prophetess of a spiritual church at Apowa in the Ahanta West District in the Western Region.
She was kept in a reptile-infested wooden structure away from the Nazareth Prayer and Healing Camp to await her turn for Prophetess Mary Wood to exorcise the alleged witchcraft from her.
On hearing of the girl’s predicament, a combine team of officials of the Department of Social Welfare and the police visited the prayer camp yesterday to rescue the girl, in spite of resistance from the church.
Commenting on the issue on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana show on Thursday, Hon. Rashid Pelpuo who condemned the cruel act on the girl stated that the need to regulate the activities of the prayer camps has become imperative to stem the tide of such callous acts which largely infringe upon the individual’s human rights.
“ In this modern age where such medieval acts must be done away with, we still have such practices going on in Ghana, and it appears the country has not taken a strong position on these acts, nothing can be dehumanizing than restricting a young girl in a reptile infested wooden structure, we must all sit up as a country and find solutions to this bad deeds’’ he said.
Hon. Rashid Pelpuo who is also the Member of Parliament for Wa Central called for the prosecution of prayer camps operators who fall foul of the law to serve as a deterrent to other operators and save people who visit the camps from suffering trauma and unnecessary scares in the lives .
Kwadwo Anim/ghanamps.gov.gh