METSS boss exposes Hon. Kokofu over poverty in Mahama’s hometown

The Director of Operations, Monitoring, Evaluation and Technical Support Service (METSS) Project Mr Saaka Adams, has said that the residents of the Bole District are not poor as claimed by the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bantama Henry Kwabena Kokofu.

He said using the econometrics moduling techniques, only three (3) out of every ten (10) people in the Bole District are found to be poor in 2016 which is 28% and that only 9.6% of the people of Bole District that is one (1) out of every ten (10) people are in living below 2 cedis per person.

According to Mr Saaka who is also a Monitoring and Evaluation Expert (M&E) Expert, the poverty ratio is measured by a multiplicity of factors including access to portable drinking water, electricity, sanitation etc.

He said ninety-six percent (96%) of the people of Bole District have access to portable drinking water and seventy-seven percent (77%) of the inhabitants of Bole District have access to electricity.

Speaking on Bole-based Nkilgi Fm in response to a statement by the Bantama legislator that the people of President Mahama’s hometown of Bole are living an impoverished life, he said the claims of the MP are untrue.

The MP on an Accra-based FM, wondered why the President would give money to market women at Abossey Okai when almost 8 out of every 10 individuals in his hometown and constituency of Bole- Bamboi are living in abject poverty

He claims the President’s hometown of Bole has been recorded as the 7th poorest district in the nation with the residents struggling to make ends meet and bemoaned the neglect of the vicinity, saying the residents have also been complaining bitterly about their poor water system.

But Mr Saaka Adams explained that the latest (2015) poverty data indicates Bole is not among the worst performers in terms of poverty disclosing that by the World Bank extreme poverty prevalence rates of US$1.25/day/person, Bole’s poverty rate is 7.6% with a mean daily per capita expenditure of $7.70 per household and depth of poverty being 2.7%.

He said when one use the National (Ghana’s standard) poverty threshold of GH¢ 1,314 per person per annum, the poverty rate is 28%, with a depth of poverty of 10.1% and using Ghana’s extreme poverty threshold of G GH¢ 792.05, poverty rate in Bole District is 9.5% and depth of poverty is 3.3%.

“The data used by the MP for Bantama is outdated since it was collected in 2012/2013. My organization tracks poverty rates of 59 districts and have observed that poverty drops by a percentage point each year in the three Northern Regions”, he said.

He concluded that there is a lot of data out there for public sector management and entreated people especially the District management teams to get them to be realistic in handling data.