The Gender, Children and Social Protection Minister, Cynthia Morrison, has offered to adopt and sponsor the education of the five-year-old boy whose hand was cut by her stepmother and left rotten, to junior high school level.
“For Kofi I’m going to take him as my very own and then put him in school,” she said Sunday when she visited the boy at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital where he is being treated after the rotten hand was amputated last Wednesday.
The minister who was saddened by Isaac Mensah’s condition and poor family background said she would put Isaac in school and ensure he goes through primary to junior high as a “normal child”.
“I don’t know where we are going to send him to because looking at the grandmother she can’t take care of him, the mother can’t take care of him, and nobody so, I’ll take him up as my own and then make sure he has the best of education,” she assured.
Isaac, who is currently in kindergarten, has said he would want to become a doctor in future, something Mrs Morrison said she would push him to achieve if only he has the IQ to study science.
She observed that typical of children, they usually say so many professions that they would want to pursue, noting in Isaac’s case, when the reality sets in is when they will be able to know if she can really do science.
“He says he wants to be a doctor and so when he starts school [and] we see his IQ whether it is fit for [science]… But if he is good in his math and sciences, i will push him to do the science that he wants to do,” Mrs Morrison told journalists at the hospital.
The minister is considering enrolling Isaac in a school she owns at Agona Swedru that has a boarding facility. She explained she has a home there which will make it easy to monitor his academic progress.
For the minister, he would want to see Isaac grow to become “proper human being” so he could be an advocate for children who have gone through or face similar situations.
Mrs. Morrison indicated that the sponsorship for Isaac’s education will be from her own pocked and her Ministry.
Mrs Morrison commended individuals and organisations who have offered to support the boy and provide him with prosthesis.
Beyond that, she underscored the need to open a child account for Isaac which he can fall on in the future for his tertiary education.
She said she cannot guarantee Isaac’s tertiary education because by that time she would have been old but “for his primary and JHS, it is mine, so i can do that for him”
“I’d make sure we have fixed account for him where nobody will touch that money so that that money will be generated for his future because he can go to my school for free, he gets to secondary school, by god’s grace there is a free SHS, what about the university? And maybe i wouldn’t be there [at that time] to follow up” she noted.
