A bill on the Property Right of Spouses will be introduced to Parliament next month. The Bill is currently at its drafting stage at the Attorney General's Department and, when passed, will give equal rights to men and women to their acquired properties in any marital setting. The Minister of Women and Children's Affairs, Hajia Alima Mahama, announced this on Tuesday when her ministry took its turn at the weekly meet-the-press series organised by the Ministry of Information and National Orientation in Accra. She said currently the Bill, which was spearheaded by her ministry, had had inputs from the Federation of Women Lawyers. (FIDA), the African Women Lawyers Association (AWLA) and the Law Reform Commission and would undergo further consultative fora to collate more views from Members of Parliament (MPs), traditional authorities, legal practitioners, individuals and civil society organisations. According to the minister, the Bill would go through Cabinet before it would finally be presented to Parliament, and that although it would generate a lot of heated debates, it needed to be put in place for couples to enjoy equal rights to properties acquired during marriage. She said her ministry would organise educational programmes across the country to ensure that people accepted the Bill. Hajia Mahama said MOWAC was collaborating with ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to ensure that gender gaps were identified in their policies, programmes and activities so that they took specific actions such as budgetary allocations to close the gap. On the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act, the minister said together with stakeholders, the ministry had organised series of workshops to develop a National Plan of Action, saying that a final draft plan with inputs, logistic requirements and costs had been captured in a three-year multi-donor budgetary support programme. On the Human Trafficking Act which was passed in 2005, the minister said a Human Trafficking Board had been inaugurated to review a draft national plan of action for adoption as a guiding framework. The minister added her ministry, in collaboration with the International Migration Organisation, had assisted in passing bye-laws to control the movement of children to places of labour, adding that the situation where females migrated to live on the streets in the regional capitals had attracted much concern. On achieving gender parity in the country, the minister called on all to look out for actions geared towards getting legislations for Affirmative Action for women in decision making and a strong campaign for more women to be politicians, presented as parliamentary candidates and actually voted for. On women economic empowerment, the minister said since March, 2006, the ministry had disbursed a total of 3,257,000 Ghana cedis (32,570,000,000 cedis) to women countrywide as micro-credit as well as organise skills training for the beneficiaries of the fund. In addition to credit facilities, she said the ministry last year, through the HIPC Funds, procured 43 agro-processing equipment and distributed them to 43 women groups together with l2,000 Ghana cedis (120,000,000 cedis) to enable them add value to their products and that 3,520 people across the country were benefiting from it, adding that this year, the GRATIS Foundation had been contracted to supply 45 agro-processing equipment for distribution to women groups. Source: Daily Graphic