Degorme (Volta Region) 24 Nov '98 Vice-President John Atta Mills has launched a 60 million-dollar Village Infrastructure Project (VIP) at Degorme in the North Tongu district and called on beneficiaries to ensure its success.
The VIP is a poverty reduction strategy initiated by the government to improve the quality of life of the rural people through the transfer of technical and financial resources for the development of basic-level infrastructure.
It covers all 110 districts and is designed to support the decentralisation programme through the district assemblies to enable them to better plan and manage rural development in a participatory manner.
The project, jointly financed by the World Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the German government, focuses on rural transportation, post-harvest processing, feeder roads and rural water interventions.
It also has in its scope increased value-added farming methods, improved storage and processing, small-scale irrigation and village markets.
Its successful implementation is expected to benefit about 500,000 rural families.
Speaking at a grand durbar of the chiefs and people of Mepe traditional area, Prof Mills said the VIP is a manifestation of government's determination to accelerate growth and development on a sustainable basis through significant reduction in rural poverty.
Poverty, he said, still remains high in the rural areas in spite of over 10 years of economic reforms.
A recent poverty assessment study revealed that nearly 54 per cent of Ghana's are poor food-crop farmers who derive their primary sources of income from farming and other farm-based activities. Prof Mills attributed this situation to severe constrained access to input and output markets as well as poor conditions of agricultural rural support infrastructure. "The poor state of rural infrastructure such as feeder roads and farm-to-village tracks presents significant impediments to the accessibility of modern farm inputs and improved technology." He said although the VIP will be implemented by the district assemblies, no parallel structure will be established at the district level for this purposes. Instead, project management would be mainstreamed within the existing administrative structure of each participating assembly with training and other technical assistance provided directly to strengthen such functions as procurement, financial management, internal controls and reporting. However, VIP will run concurrently with the Agriculture Sector Improvement Project (ASIP) currently in place. Each district is also required to provide counterpart funds from its common fund for sub-projects. The Vice-President planted a tree to mark the launch and reiterated ''government's commitment to push forward this development agenda''.
