The Gender Minister has explained why a five-year-old boy whose stepmother cut his left hand, ended up at the Osu Children’s Home instead of her care.

Cynthia Morrison said her position bars her from adopting any child since she is the mother of all children in the country. 

“I was told by my Ministry that because I am the Gender Minister I cannot adopt a child so if I have to bring the child home, I needed to have a care order,” she told Joy News.  

She was speaking on the sidelines of the Independence Day celebrations of Canada at the High Commissioner's residence in Accra on Wednesday night. 

The family of the five-year-old boy is accusing the minister of failing to fulfil her promise to take care of the child. They say Madam Morrison promised to send Isaac [not his real name] to a school she owns at Agona Swedru in the Central Region, where she will take care of him till he completes his secondary education. However, the family claims Isaac is at the Osu Children’s Home in Accra. Related: Family of abused child on custody warpath with Gender Minister The family, therefore, wants the Minister to return the boy to them to care for him if she won’t fulfil her promise. But the minister rejects their claim. She said when she was called that Isaac was about to be discharged from the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital after his hand was amputated, she arranged for a car to convey him and his grandmother to the Osu Children’s Home.  “She [his grandmother] took the child there because I could not bring him to my house for the aforementioned reason,” Madam Morrison said.  Regarding her promise to take care of his education, the Gender Minister said she was unable to immediately send him to school to forestall the other school children stigmatising him.  “I wanted the doctors to finish fixing his prosthetic hand which is scheduled for August this year and in September, he will go to school,” she said.