Forty-five (45) households from two communities in the Tamale Metropolis of the Northern Region have being supported with 224 sheep under the livestock sub component of Resiliency In Northern Ghana project (RING) under the auspices of United States Agency for International Development ( USAID).
RING is a five year integrated project and partnership effort under USAID’s Feed the Future initiative designed to contribute to the Government of Ghana's efforts to sustainably reduce poverty and improve the nutritional status of vulnerable populations.
The purpose of the RING project is to improve the livelihoods and nutritional status of vulnerable households in targeted communities of 17 districts in the Northern Region. Junu and Baglahi, two of the beneficiary communities received 30 sheep each totaling 60 sheep on Saturday, July 25, 2015 from the Tamale metropolitan assembly through metro Agricultural department.
Each beneficiary household comprising women and men received five sheep. Five communities will benefit from RING livestock component with each beneficiary community given a ram to fertilize the female ones.
Beneficiaries have also been trained on basic animal production including housing, sanitation of fence, breeding and feeding among others. The Tamale Metropolitan Director of Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Mr Charles Adams disclosed this to Zaa News at a short ceremony to present the livestock to Junu and Baglahi communities in the Tamale metropolis.
The metro director said the project will be scale up in subsequent years to improve upon vulnerable people in the metropolis.
The project main target was women with men as heads of the families also being considered to breach the gender inequality.
Before a household can be qualify for RING, the selection team had to examine the household the number of women with children and women not yet in their menopause.
The Tamale Metropolitan Chief Executive, Hanan Gundaadow Abdul Rahaman who presented the animals to the two communities made passionate appeal to them not to allow the livestock given them to roam in the streets of the Metropolis as that remains a major cause of road accidents in the Metro area.
The mayor believes the USAID-RING intervention will create an enable environment to ensuring that poverty levels among the people are reduced if not eradicated.
This comes 3 days after 7 more municipal and district assemblies were ushered onto the RING program Wednesday. The USAID RING program is a sixty million US dollar grant aimed at improving the livelihood of the most vulnerable to poverty in thematic areas of Agriculture, Health, hand washing and nutrition.
The Tamale mayor said the assembly gave priority to women beneficiaries because women are the caretakers of most homes in the Northern region.
The livestock according to the mayor have been vaccinated and dewormed and that veterinary officers would do a regular check on the animals to ensure their health and sustainability.
Two of the beneficiaries, Amina Abdul Karim and Adamu Hudu who spoke o Zaa News thanked the assembly and the donors for coming to their aid. They however lamented about the threat of diseases such as Sulfur and legs wounds of animals in their communities in spite of assurance that veterinary officer’s regular monitory.
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