Police-Civilian Ratio in Northern Region Too Scary – Report

Interior Minister, Kwesi Ahwoi

The Northern Region, undoubtedly the largest region in Ghana in terms of land size and the most conflict prone area in the entire country currently, is said to have a police-civilian ratio of 1:2,755, a situation described by the Regional Police Command as very scary.

According to Assistant Commissioner of Police Appia-gyei who is also the Deputy Regional Police Commander, the current numerical strength of police personnel in the region stood at 900, and these include senior police officers and constables on practical attachment.

Delivering a speech on behalf of the outgoing Regional Police Commander Deputy Commissioner of Police George Tuffour at this year’s West Africa Security Service Association (WASSA) get together in Tamale, ACP Appia-gyei said: “In relation to the population of the Northern Region which is given as 2, 479, 461 [per the 2010 Population and Housing Census] then statistically the police-civilian ratio is 1:2,755.”

The scenario given above, he said, was very scary in terms of performance of the command’s mandatory obligation in fighting crime as well as maintaining law and order and called for the combined and collaborative effort of everyone to achieve its targets, pledging that personnel would uphold high professionalism devoid of behavioural tendencies that tend to dent the hard earned image of the Police Administration.

ACP Appia-gyei confirmed that the region was faced with a number of security challenges such as chieftaincy and communal conflicts, armed robbery and others, saying “if we do away with complacency, we would be able to curb these social cankers and be on top of the situation”.

IGP Mohammed Ahmed Alhassan

But in 2012, the region recorded 2,149 crime cases with an increase of 389 cases [17.73 percent] from the 2011 cases of 1,768. Also, motor accidents and traffic offences recorded during the same period were 192 compared to 2011 which were 293, a decrease of 34.47 percent.

ACP Appia-gyei on behalf of the Regional Police Command expressed appreciation to the military that had always collaborated with them to ensure peace and tranquility, citing for instance Yendi and Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo Districts where personnel from both institutions were on peacekeeping mission there.  

The Deputy Northern Regional Police Commander further congratulated officers and men in the region for their selfless devotion to work that had brought honour to the service and hoped that, the occasion would gird their loins for the challenges ahead and deal with them assiduously. 

The outgoing Northern Regional Police Commander DCOP George Tuffour on his part urged personnel to continue to be disciplined and work hard to ensure the mandate of the command was achieved. 

He thanked colleagues of the Regional Security Council for their support and asked them to extend the same support to anyone who would be posted to the region when is gone.

WASSA was an annual event organized by soldiers of the Second World War. Those who returned felt there was the need to organise an event in memory of their colleagues who lost their lives during the war and also to celebrate victories/successes that were chalked.

Thus, it has now become necessary for all security services to today to embrace this annual event to ease fatigue after a year of assiduous service and for the commemoration of departed and living heroes/heroines. 

Decentralise Gender, Social Protection Programs For Maximum Impact

The Programme Advocacy and Communications Officer of the Ghana Developing Communities Association (GDCA) Mrs. Rosemond Sumaya Kumah, has appealed to the Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection Nana Oye Lithur, to endeavour to decentralise programs of the ministry to the grassroots level so that they could make maximum impact on the lives of marginalized and vulnerable groups.    

She observed that, there was too much concentration of policy programs of the ministry at the national and regional levels much to the detriment of persons and groups in the rural areas who eventually become the beneficiaries, adding “most of the rural people especially women are not aware of the existence of some social protection programs for them and even those who are aware, do not also know how to access them.”

Speaking to this writer during a media review meeting of GDCA’s 5-year project dubbed “Empowerment for Life (E4L)”, Mrs. Kumah encouraged the minister to have the rural areas top of her agenda so that the lives of women and children and their social protection needs could be taken care of very well.       

Mrs. Kumah who is also a gender advocate said there was nothing wrong with President  John Dramani Mahama appointing only females at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection although some people would view that move as gender-bias. 

She commended the President for his excellent appointments so far especially giving women the opportunity to serve in his government. She urged the President to further consider appointing more women on Boards of state agencies and also as Chief Executive Officers.  

E4L is implemented in fifteen Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies in the Northern Region of Ghana. They include Tamale Metroplis, Yendi Municipality, Tolon-Kumbungu, Savelugu-Nanton, Karaga, Gushiegu, Saboba, Chereponi, Nanumba North, Nanumba South, Zabzugu, West Mamprusi, East Gonja, West Gonja and Kpandai.

The programme which was launched on 1^st January, 2010 and is expected to end on 31^st December, 2014, is aimed at empowering the poor, vulnerable and marginalised group in the aforementioned areas to have the capacity and ability to improve their quality of life through education, employment, local organisation as well as better access to and management of food and water resources on the basis of a right-based approach.

The programme was among other things targeting a primary group of 66,545 people and a secondary group consisting of 64,815 people. It has been grouped into two phases with the first phase covering the period from 1^st January 2010 to 31^st December 2011 whilst the second phase covered the period from 1^st January 2012 to 31^st December 2014.

The EfL project was relying on strategies that would focus more on advocacy as compared to service delivery and also focused on tracking all root causes of inequalities and making them known to those who should fulfil those rights. 

Whilst supporting the right holders to demand their rights and giving voice to the voiceless, capacity building was also organised to help duty-bearers and right-holders with the needed capacity to carry out their roles and responsibilities effectively.

 

Meanwhile a Complementary Basic Education Draft Policy document, an invention of one of GDCA’s auxiliary organisations –School for Life, is currently being revised by the Ghana Education Service and expected to start implementation by May 2013 when it is launched. 

Financially supported by the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom government and UNICEF with an estimated amount of £17.6 million, implementation would last within three years (2013 – 2015). As part of the inception phase, the management unit of GES is currently conducting a mapping exercise to select regions and implementing partners for the first year.  

The Complementary Basic Education Policy document provided guidelines in the delivery of complementary basic education in deprived communities where a considerable number of children were still out of school. It is estimated that close to 1 million children of school age in Ghana were still out of the formal schooling system and if urgent steps were not taken to revert the trend, there could be a greater percentage of illiterate Ghanaians in future.

Northern Men Urged To Support Women in Their House Chores

A demographic finding from the United Nations Decade for Women (2000) describes the situation of women in statements such as; “Women constitute half of the world’s population, perform two-thirds of the world’s work, but receive only one-third of its income and own less than one–hundredth of its property”.

The situation described above is generally true for all women globally, but its proportions, dimensions and effects, in the socio-cultural setting of the women of Northern Ghana, is very worrisome and thus calls for action in finding ways of removing these limitations, which are inhibiting the growth of Northern women in their lives functions.

Women in the area believe they have the potential to own their own business enterprises and also have the strong will to grow them to prove their worth in various endeavours, as they are the major source of labour of their societies.

It is the insistent contention of women that, giving equal opportunities to women through practical interventions and policies must be at the heart of initiatives aimed at addressing not only poverty rates, but also reducing the numerous causative gender disparities in the distribution of wealth.

Unfortunately, certain negative traditional and cultural practices continue to limit women and tend to sway them in their attempt to grow in business as they continue to suffer from male dominance and abject poverty.

The marriage institution, the traditional system of inheritance and the traditional leadership system are the main socio-cultural vehicles over which men in the area do not only have absolute dominance, but also are used as denial, exclusion and limitation tools to inhibit the growth of women in many life’s functions.

A married woman, who is also a successful business entrepreneur, owning landed property is a rare phenomenon in the North. This is because most men out of envy and fear of losing their respect and power as house-heads will go to the extent of seeking supernatural powers popularly known in Ghanaian parlance as juju and use it to derail the business of their wives

In view of the aforementioned, non-governmental organisation ActionAid-Ghana, with support from the Dutch government on their Funding Leadership Opportunities for Women (FLOW) under a project dubbed: “Women Rights to Sustainable Livelihood Project”, is currently training 115 community facilitators from four districts in the Northern and Upper East Regions in unpaid care work and time diaries.

Unpaid care work is imbued in the African and for that matter the Ghanaian society, since the creation of man but usually seen as women’s work. It is defined as work such as caring for mother, father and siblings; working for the community; cooking and fetching water for the family; cleaning and sweeping the home; feeding and bathing children among others.

A northern woman preparing shea butter

According to statistics from ActionAid, an average Northern woman spends about 70 percent of her time on house chores or unpaid care work daily, and as a result, majority of them are denied the opportunity to engage in other income generating activities or businesses in order to support their families as well as empower themselves economically.

The NGO believes the desire for paid work by many women have led to working a ‘double day’, squeezing leisure time and leading to stress, exhaustion or ‘burnout’ continuously leading to serious implications on their health and their general wellbeing. Care obligations, it says, also create obstacles to women’s full and meaningful participation in the public sphere, making it difficult for them to enter debates at the community level and stand as representatives for local government.

Unfortunately, these issues as highlighted above have gained little recognition from governments and other groups in Ghana. By ignoring unpaid care work in economic analyses, government and the market assume that unpaid care work is more a matter of concern for the household and in particular for women in a household, which is not good for community and family cohesion.

Accordingly, the training programme of the NGO is expected to have a trickledown effect on 3000 women smallholder farmers from Talensi, Nabdam, Nanumba North and Nanumba South districts of the Northern and Upper East Regions of Ghana where the project is being implemented.

The project aims to empower women to demand more public services from local and national authorities to fulfill their basic human rights and support their households to provide better quality care, while saving them time and energy to engage in other activities. Through this process, the programme seeks to support women’s individual and collective empowerment.

Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of one of a series of training workshops in Tamale, the Project Manager Ms. Azumi Mesuna, said the training programme also aims at equipping community facilitators and partner staff with knowledge on unpaid care work and time diaries so that they can engage in effective advocacy at the community level. 

She explained that, it intends to start changing women’s and men’s beliefs that unpaid care work is primarily the responsibility of women and girls and that it is not as valuable as men’s contribution through paid work. “In other words, the time has come for men to support women in their house chores so that society can do away with the problem of differentiating roles and responsibilities for men and women as well as girls and boys”, she emphasised.

Meanwhile, it is the expectation of ActionAid-Ghana that by the end of the training programme, community members would have accepted that unpaid care work negatively impacts on the political and socio-economic development and contributions of women smallholder farmers and have therefore, resolved to share unpaid care work with women and children.

Ghanaians Asked To Protect Fresh Water Resources

Water pollution can be defined as anything humans do to cause harmful effects to water bodies. This can include pollution of rivers, lakes, oceans, and ground water pollution. The causes of pollution in water are virtually endless. 

Manufacturing plants are major causes of water pollution, using bodies of fresh water to carry away waste that can contain phosphates, nitrates, lead, mercury and other harmful and toxic substances. Hot water discharged into streams can raise the temperature of rivers to change the chemistry of water bodies causing what is termed as ―thermal pollution (Grill, 2007).

Mining is an activity classified as most polluting as well as a drain on the dwindling water resources in the World. A study conducted by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in 1999 on the water situation in African countries specifically cited Ghana as being one of the most water-stressed countries. 

In Ghana, the effects of the activities of mining companies on water bodies through dewatering, ground water pollution, the free use of water for mining operations, pollution of streams through cyanide and other waste spillages, are contributing enormously to impoverishing the communities who live around their operational areas.

Thus, as Ghana joined the rest of the world to mark this year’s Word Fresh Water Day Celebration which fell on 22^nd March, stakeholders in the water and sanitation sector of the country’s economy, strongly urged government to deal with the problem of illegal small scale miners as well as other multinational companies or individuals engaged in the pollution of fresh water resources in many parts of the country.

This year’s event was under the theme: “International Year of Water Cooperation”. The day is set aside as a means of focusing attention on the importance of fresh water and advocating for the sustainable use and management of fresh water resources and this has been celebrated each year. The celebration was first recommended at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The UN General Assembly responded by designating 22^nd March 1993 as the first world fresh water day and since then, it had been celebrated each year highlighting on specific aspects of fresh water.

Recent studies on water situation in Northern Ghana showed that the region is endowed with surface water and much less of groundwater resources. The area is relatively dry, with a single rainy season that begins June or July and ends in October. Available surface water is about 1, 737 billion gallons per annum which is about 19 percent of the total annual national figure of 40 billion m3.

However, this amount is not available all year round as most of the rivers draining the region dwindle to hardly any or no flow in the dry season with only pockets of stagnant water remaining because of the high seasonal rainfall variation.

The region underlain by mainly the voltaian sedimentary geological formation which is generally perceived as not a good source of groundwater with low borehole success rate of about 53 percent according to the Ghana Hydrological Service Department.

The Northern Region for instance, has an estimated population rate of 3 percent according to the 2010 population and housing census. The implication is that population is steadily increasing but the water resources are not available throughout the year. This results in water rationing, creates conflict for water among residents.

This also implies that there is growing demand for clean drinking water which is exacerbating the degradation of land and water resources as well as increasing conflict in water use.

Now with the advent of climate change, the area is faced with severe water crisis. The rainfall patterns have changed and government would not have the privilege to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on water. 

Diseases from unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren't strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses.

According to the 2000 population census, Northern Region had 1,820,806 people and the daily water available at the time was 2,083 gallons per person. The estimated 2010 census is 2,468,557and the daily water available is now reduced to 1,659 gallons per person, a reduction of 20 percent within ten years according to the authorities of Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL).

Also, it is estimated that 500,000 people in five Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in the region, could soon experience erratic supply of potable water to their homes by 2015 due to the inability of the water Treatment Plant at the Dalun Headworks to work beyond its optimum level.

The GWCL said the optimization of the plant capacity at the Dalun Headworks would be due in 2015. This is because, the last expansion and rehabilitation works at the Dalun Headworks by Messer’s Biwater BV in 2008, were expected to reach their final optimization by 2015 and thus would not be able to pump water beyond the required capacity from Nawuni or White Volta River for treatment and consumption by the populace.

The GWCL supply water from its production site at Dalun to almost half-a-million people spread across the Tamale Metropolis, Savelugu-Nanton Municipality, Sagnarigu, Tolon and Kumbungu Districts, with its larger clientele being residents of Tamale.

Currently, the GWCL daily production is about 7 million gallons or 39,000 cubic meters. Even though this figure is expected to increase due to population rise, GWCL officials dread the 7 million gallons daily production could become insufficient if another water expansion project that is expected to have been under construction by now to increase production levels is further delayed by government. 

The Nawuni River, the main production source of potable water for residents of the five MMDAs in the region, has recently come under serious environmental threat. 

Years of uncontrolled sand winning by building contractors and owners of tipper-trucks, has destroyed farmlands and the ecosystem along the river banks including economic and medicinal trees. As a result, the depth of the river has reduced drastically over the years due to silt which has incapacitated its water holding ability.

More worrying is the fact that the silting of the river is posing a great danger to residents of the aforementioned MMDAs, threatening the river’s future capacity to supply the required volume of water to about half a million people.

sand wining activity on the banks of Nawuni River

An official source at GWCL says it cost the company an amount of GH¢50,000.00 to procure chemicals such as alum and others to treat the water in order to ensure that it is safe for consumption. This means that the more the river is polluted, the more chemicals would be required to treat the water and the public could therefore pay more for it in future. 

Indeed, the region currently suffers from shortages in clean drinking water and about 40 percent (CWSA, 2009) of people use unimproved sources of drinking water. As a result, incidences of water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea, hepatitis A, typhoid, cholera and among others are common.

Waterborne diseases are spread through contaminated drinking water supply and through inadequate sanitation and hygiene practices. Also, 37.5 percent of people use unprotected ponds, lakes or streams as sources of potable water supply in the region. This problem is exacerbated by a lack of safe sanitation, especially when 92 percent of residents lack access to improved sanitation (VanCalcar, 2006).

 Addressing a forum in Tamale to mark the celebration of the 2013 world fresh water day organized by World Vision Ghana, David Nunoo, Coordinator of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Coordinator of the NGO, called for cooperation amongst all Ghanaians towards the use and management of water resources in order to ensure their sustainability for future use.   

He reckoned the fact that, government has a huge responsibility in making available potable water to its citizens as well as ensuring that those polluting fresh water resources put a stop to it by enforcing environmental laws and prosecuting those who breached such laws.

Mr. also Nunoo called  on government to double up efforts to make available safe drinking water to a lot of Ghanaians particularly women and children in rural areas who still walk long distances in search of the precious commodity which most often affect their occupational and schooling hours. 

Meanwhile, according to a World Health Organisation and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme report on water and sanitation, Ghana currently has exceeded its 2015 target of 78 percent coverage for use of improved drinking water by 6 percent. The report however said a significant proportion of the population (about 3.5 million) still do not use improved sources of drinking water and more effort is still needed to extend coverage to these people. On sanitation, further analysis of available data indicates that for Ghana to reach its MDG target of 53 percent for use of improved sanitation by 2015, it will mean that as much as 1.2 million people need to use or have access to improved sanitary facilities every year till 2015 (from 2008).