Create Criteria For Disbursement Of PWDs Fund –Govt told

Lack of transparency in the implementation of social protection programmes by some Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in the Northern Region of Ghana appears to be causing agitation and mistrust among beneficiaries, who are mostly persons with disabilities (PWDs).

For this reason, government has been asked to put in place a criterion for the disbursement of the 2 percent share of the district assembly common fund (DACF) allocated to PWDs since there was no such thing in place, thereby always creating confusion between MMDA officials and the PWDs and vulnerable groups such as mentally ill persons and epileptic patients.

This came to light during series of interface meetings organized in seven MMDAs by Gub-Katimali Society, a non-governmental organization in the Northern Region, as part of the implementation of a three-year project funded by the European Union Commission in Ghana. The MMDAs include East Mamprusi, West Mamprusi, Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo, Nanumba North, Nanumba South, Central Gonja and Tamale. 

The project, dubbed “Promoting an Inclusive and Empowered Civil Society to advance Socio-Economic and Political Development in Ghana” aimed to build an inclusive and empowered civil society well aware of their needs and rights, including existing and contemplated public policies and programmes and increase their debate as well as lobby and advocate in their favour.

It also intended to contribute to increasing awareness and capacities of Community Based Organisations of men and women with mental illness or epilepsy, PWDs, women, youth and farmer groups to influence policy planning and implementation. 

Some of the beneficiaries who spoke during an open forum at one of such meetings in Tamale, complained that the PWDs Fund was managed by a committee put in place by the assembly of which they have a representative, but their representative was not part of the signatories to the bank account opened for the Fund.

They also disclosed that PWDs had no knowledge of how much money was always transferred into their bank account at the end of every quarter and as a result, the lack of transparency here was breeding mistrust between PWDs and assembly officials.

Other participants also bewailed the manner in which assembly officials had succeeded in politicising almost all social protection programmes and development projects being implemented, saying mostly certain programmes intended to benefit them were rather given to other group of people based on political favouritism and not because they deserve to benefit.

On the other hand, MMDA officials complained bitterly about the late transfer of their DACF which negatively affect their planned activities in every quarter, thereby portraying assembly officials as liars to the people particularly those who were entitled to some form of monies allocated to them in the DACF.

Besides, some of the MMDA officials expressed concern about the dishonest nature of some PWD and other vulnerable groups, saying most of them squander their money anyhow on alcohol, mobile phones and other trivial things instead of investing it in income generating activity since the Fund was a revolving one and others were on standby expecting to benefit.  

It also emerged that there was discrimination and stigmatisation among the PWDs as the physically challenged, visually and hearing impaired did not want mentally ill and epileptic persons to benefit from the Fund because they perceived them not to be PWDs.  

Meanwhile, the Executive Director of Gub-Katimali Society, Sheik Yakubu Abdul-Kareem expressed satisfaction about the MMDAs efforts to meet the demands of their people in spite of the difficulties they faced.

He however, wished the PWDs and other vulnerable groups in various MMDAs could cooperate with officials so that they could deliver on their mandate.

A grassroots development organization founded in 1991 to help promote rural development in Northern Ghana, Gub-Katimali Society seeks to sensitise, empower and enable local communities to realize their own development through collective participation, partnership and pooling local resources together for sustainable development.

Gub-Katimali Society currently operates in nine MMDAs in the Northern Region and has since its establishment and with the support of its partners such as Trull Foundation, Charity of Rebecca and Hope for Children, supported over 70 students some of whom have completed tertiary and secondary education. It has also supported children with mental illness to enroll in or go back to school after stabilizing, and provided their parents with small ruminants to rear in order to cater for their children’s education.

Agriculturist Offer Solutions To Africa's Food Security Challenges

Prof. David Millar

The immediate past Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University for Development Studies (UDS) Professor David Millar, has called on African governments to reassess the progress of the continent’s agricultural prospects in view of growing urbanisation so that they could deal with the issue of food and nutritional security effectively. 

He said that, a bulk of the food produced by farmers to feed the populace including urban dwellers, majority of who were in the formal sector, was often through the toil of smallholder farmers in rural areas. 

The Professor of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences however, wondered why decisions taken by African governments and policymakers often excluded the views of the rural farmer, saying this had made it almost impossible to mitigate the challenges of food and nutritional security on the continent.

Prof. Millar who was delivering a lecture on the topic: “Food and Nutritional Security: Mitigating Hunger in Africa” as part of the university’s 20^th anniversary celebration in Tamale, observed that at a time when most people lived and worked in urban environments, feeding Africa’s cities challenges the current food supply and production patterns. 

According to him, “Feeding African cities also challenges the way in which policymakers and other key actors perceive the rural vis-à-vis the urban. Traditionally, the rural area has been seen as a provider of services for the urban area, where as food policies have largely been addressed from the angle of large-scale production of major selected staples”, he noted.

Quoting extensively from the 2011 Africa Progress Report of the Africa Progress Panel chaired by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he said it recognized the fact that several African countries were on the verge of meeting their Millennium Development Goal targets for hunger reduction.

This notwithstanding, the report he noted, also emphasised that the continent as a whole continued to be the world’s most food-insecure region. “Hunger and malnutrition remain pervasive in many countries, and rising food prices are compounding the situation for millions across the continent, particularly in zones of protracted conflict and in fast growing urban areas”, he observed.

Adding, Prof. Millar mentioned the position was taken in the report that, agricultural productivity was also affected by social realities such as persistent poverty and insufficient access of women to land and other essential resources.

Faced with reduced access to food and increased vulnerability to the seasonality of local food prices and markets, the report he said also observed that households were forced into unavoidable compromises such as choosing cheaper (often less nutritious) food, selling productive assets, withdrawing children from school, forgoing healthcare or simply eating less than they needed.

The report, according to Prof. Millar, enumerated the barriers to food security which included disadvantageous international trade rules and subsidy regimes; a debilitating lack of essential infrastructure such as irrigation and storage systems; inadequate agricultural research; a lack of improved seeds, fertilisers and plant protection material; poor soil and water management systems; poor access to credit and marketing services as well as inefficient and wasteful agricultural value chains.

He explained that these structural barriers cited by the report were increasingly compounded by global trends, adding that, in the short-term, the gap between the continent’s domestic food supply and demand would widen as global consumption patterns continued to shift towards meat products, and more profitable bio-fuels supplant food crops.

Global food production would have to increase by 70 percent over the next 40years to keep pace with population growth, and a significant part of that increase he confirmed, would have to come from Africa.

However, a section of the report concluded that there was an urgent need to scale up successful interventions, focus on Africa’s army of smallholder farmers and increase emphasis on staple food crops. Adding, Prof. Millar noted that, there was also a need to ensure that the growing foreign investments in Africa’s arable land, sometimes referred to as “land grabs”, were transparent saying “they add to the continent’s food insecurity, they do not benefit local farmers and communities, they undermine social, environmental and indigenous governance systems.”

Thus, in conclusion the former Pro-Vice Chancellor of the UDS stated that if African governments really want to feed their people they must assist the continent develop what its people on their own see as food, saying that was the area partners from the North needed to support because that was where real challenge lies for everyone to feed Africa.

Meanwhile, established in May 1992 by the Government of Ghana, the UDS exist to blend the academic world with that of the community in order to provide constructive interaction between the two for the total development of Northern Ghana, in particular, and the country as a whole. 

The UDS has four (4) campuses, seven (7) Faculties, a Business School, one Medical School, one Graduate School and three (3) centers located across the three regions of the North including Upper West, Upper East and Northern. Several programs are run at these places. 

With an initial student population of 39 that was enrolled into the Faculty of Agriculture at the Nyankpala campus in September 1993, the university currently has about twenty-thousand students spread across all its four campuses with the Wa campus being the most populated.

Prez Mahama, Wife Donate Laptops To Alma Mater

Prez Mahama and Wife

President John Dramani Mahama and his wife, the First Lady Mrs. Lordina Mahama, have made a joint donation of one hundred laptops and 250 exercise books to their alma mater, Ghana Senior High School (Ghanasco) in Tamale, the Northern Regional capital.

According to the Northern Regional Minister Moses Bukari Mabengba who made the donation on behalf of the President and his wife, the gesture was intended to boost science, mathematics and Information, Communication and Technology education in the school.

This donation, the minister noted, was also to add up to an earlier pledge by President Mahama about a year ago during the celebration of the school’s fiftieth anniversary, which included the fencing of the entire school land and the construction of a new girls’ dormitory. 

The minister admonished the students to take their studies seriously and desist from engaging in truancy, dodging to town as well as indulging in other nefarious activities that could jeorpadise their future.

Mr. Mabengba told the students to be happy and thankful of the fact that, the President of the republic and his wife were old students of the school, saying that alone should motivate them to aim high as they were in school.

Mr. Mabengba personally, also donated a cash amount of GH¢1,000.00 to the school and urged the authourities to use the money to buy mathematics textbooks to stock their library so that students could make good use of them in their studies.

Additionally, Mr. Mabengba again donated a cash amount of GH¢500.00 to Kabral House Ghanasco which he recently adopted, for their sterling performance during an inter-housing sports competition organised by the school.

Receiving the donation on behalf of the school, the Headmistress of Ghanasco Mrs. Mary Asobayire Dan-Braimah, expressed her heartfelt gratitude to President Mahama and his wife Mrs. Mahama, for their unflinching support towards the development of the school.

Meanwhile, Assistant Headmaster of Ghanasco in charge of Administration Chief N.A. Dramani told Savannahnews in an interview that, since the establishment of the school over fifty years ago, it had continued to make progress in the field of science and mathematics education especially being the first second cycle institution in Africa to launch a locally made rocket into space.

According to him, they school had not relaxed on its oars and always came top or second placed at any science and mathematics quiz competition organized locally or nationally.

In view of these significant achievements, Chief Dramani said Ghanasco was recently given four scholarships by the Indian Government to sponsor brilliant students to go to India and study science.

Rise-Ghana Launches Project To Combat New TB Infections

Ghana has recorded an increased number of Tuberculosis cases in recent times with 12,511 in 2007 and a peak of 15,842 in 2011 with 2010 recording 15,067 as against 14,479 in 2008 and 12,963 in 2007. These successes have been achieved by a combined effort of all stakeholders in the health sector.

TB control in Ghana has seen an unprecedented increase in detected cases and successful treatment of patients over the past six years. Globally, the World Health Organisation estimates that, 85 percent of all new infections detected had been treated successfully. Ghana achieved this target from 76.1 to 85.3 percent of all infected TB cases detected in 2011. 

In order to attain a 100 percent treatment target or complete elimination of TB, Rural Initiatives for Self Empowerment (RISE-Ghana), a non-governmental organisation based in the Upper East Regional capital town of Bolgatanga, recently launched a project aimed at combating new TB infections and encouraging persons with the disease to seek treatment at the hospital.

The project also intended to fight stigmatisation, a major bottleneck that is derailing efforts towards eliminating the disease in the country and let people know that sharing cutlery, drinking cups and eating with an infected person would not necessarily get them infected with the disease.

The one year US$20,000 project, according to the Project Manager of RISE-Ghana Awal Ahmed, was funded by Stop TB Partnership Challenge Facility for Civil Society Organsations and the funds would be used to mobilise and strengthen CSOs and TB patients so that they could hold government, civil society and other service providers accountable so as to increase responsiveness towards TB, MDR-TB and HIV-TB.

He explained that an enabling environment would be created for various actors such as health advocates, TB patients, CSOs and the media to engage in advocacy and accountability dialogues towards stopping TB in the Upper East Region. “The project will also increase awareness on TB and reduce stigma through a monthly radio talk-show programme.”

According to health experts, TB is a curable disease that is spread through air by coughing, sneezing, shouting or singing. If one experience a cough for more than two weeks, weight loss, excessive night sweat he/she must report to the nearest health facility for laboratory investigation.

If it is not diagnosed as TB, it could be any other lung disease like asthma, bronchitis or pneumonia that needs to be treated. The WHO estimates that out of the 85 percent of TB cases that occurred in developing countries, Africa had 30 percent while Asia recorded 55 percent.