Executive Director of the National Population Council (NPC), Dr. Leticia Adelaide Appiah says the issue of child beggars should be tackled from the root cause for a lasting solution.

‘‘Every condition has an underlying cause, taking them off the street is temporary. We should synchronise the short and long term solution to solve this problem. We should ask ourselves the reason they are in the streets,’’ she said.

Dr. Appiah who was speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on Monday said children were supposed to either be at home or in school and that their presence in the streets meant something was pushing them to the streets.

She said it was important that, as a nation, the citizenry should “agree that no child is found on the streets and ensure that children are off the streets.

Dr Appiah urged government to proffer stiffer punishments to parents found to have shirked their responsibilities.

“We cannot use tax-payers money to take the children off the streets, house and feed them, where do we want to go as a nation when we do that?”

She said all citizens had rights, duties and privileges, and charged the populace to address the situation.

GNA has observed that child beggars have virtually taken over the streets of Accra, begging for alms.

The Ghana News Agency (GNA) gathered that some local government Assemblies have recently taken a few child beggars off the streets with the help of some security officers.

In an interview with one of the children, 10-year–old Abiba (not her real name), revealed that she came from Niger with her mother and other siblings and had to beg for alms with her siblings in order to feed the family.