The Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Honorable Otiko Afisah Djabah has charged metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) from the three regions of the north to work hard to improve the lives of the people they serve.
The minister said it is worrying and unacceptable for the three regions to continue to remain the poorest in the country.
Addressing the MMDECs and their coordinating directors at a day’s sensitization workshop in Tamale, the gender minister said the northern region leads the nation in the poverty chart with 43,173 households being described as poor, followed by the Upper West region with 38,133 households and the Upper East, with 31,061 households.
According to Mrs. Otiko, of the total 1,120367 households classified as poor, half of the number was in the 3 northern region. Out of the number, 56% are women and 44% men, 18% disabled, the elderly 32 and infant 7% and extremely poor 1%.
The staggering figures the minister said, call for concerted efforts by all to extract nearly 2.2 million vulnerable people from extreme poverty.
The Minister told the MMDCEs to dream extraordinarily to help eradicate poverty because poverty is not for Ghanaians, especially for the people in northern Ghana. “Poverty is not for Ghanaians, it is a disease.”
She also entreated MMDCEs to arrange taskforces to ensure that every child in their jurisdictions is in school to combat child streetism.
Emergency needs
The country’s emergency needs in social protection she said stands at 2,188 households with northern region alone recording 1,142 households.
Sagnarigu Municipality leads the group with 504 households followed by Nanumba North- 483 and Tamale Metropolis 280 households.
The numbers, Minister Otiko said, resulted from flood situations that hit the districts.
Closure of witches camps in the North
The Gender Minister also announced government plans to close down all alleged witches’ camps doted across the northern region.
“Where is the alleged wizards. It is not only women who are being accused. We are embarking on closing down all witches camp in the country,” she said.
Head-porter job
Her ministry is also planning to get all kayeyas off the streets. Plans, she added, are far advanced to end the kayaye menace, which she said, is dehumanizing
“We will eradicate the head-porter work our youngsters from the north are doing in Accra and Kumasi in the next five years. We will eradicate kayayes and child marriage in the next five years . Ghana is the best place for every Ghanaians,” she said.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.