Entrepreneurial skills key to poverty reduction in Ghana - MP

Mr Bayon Godfrey Tangu, the Member of Parliament for Wa East, as reiterated the need to restructure schools’ curricula to include entrepreneurial skills training to reduce extreme poverty in Ghana.

He said most of the things in the current schools’ curricula were not geared towards poverty reduction.

Mr Tangu, who is also the Chairman of Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy Committee, said there was the need to train school children in entrepreneurial skills to empower them to be self-reliant after their education.

Mr Tangu was speaking at a day’s Multi stakeholder Conference on Pro-Poor Intervention Financing, organised by SEND-Ghana, under its “Addressing Inequality Through Pro-Poor Budget Advocacy (AIPBA) Project to discuss interventions that are geared towards poverty reduction in the country.

The MP called for redefinition of the agricultural system to bring the majority of the people in that sector out of poverty.

“We also need to review our tax system to relieve the poor in our society. As a country, we should be able to tax the rich to take care of the poor. Collectively, we should all be fighting poverty, which has become a social problem,” he said.

He said many countries, including China, were able to reduce the poverty rate in their countries and Ghana too could do same.

Mr Anthony Krakah, the Head of Industrial Statistics, Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), presenting “Ghana’s Poverty Profile – GLSS R7” said the Report indicates that out of every 100 persons living in Ghana, at least eight of them are extremely poor.

He said over the years, growth had become pro-poor in the country and poverty was still a rural phenomenon.

“Rural Savannah still ranks highest in poverty rates among all the ecological zones. 26 per cent of all poor people in Ghana are in the three northern regions, contributing more than 40 per cent to national poverty,” he said, and called for concrete measures to assist the people there to come out of extreme poverty.

Mr Kakrah said the Report showed a rise in inequality as a result of discrimination in welfare at the regional level and called for implementation of policies and programmes that would bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.

Mr Thomas Boateng Quaison, the Head of Monitoring and Evaluation, Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), at the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, said the Ministry was collaborating with all other interventions to improve the poverty status of people benefiting from the programme.

He said currently about 400,000 households were benefitting from the LEAP programme and they depended largely on the GLSS Report to do their targeting for the programme.

Mr George Osei-Bimpeh, the Country Director of SEND-Ghana, said few years back, they had partnered FORD Foundation to address inequality and reduction of poverty.

The Conference, therefore, is to provide the Ministry of Finance the opportunity to respond to how it is addressing issues raised in the GLSS Report.

He said SEND-Ghana went round the country to collate inputs from the people and had submitted the Report to Parliament for action.

He said SEND-Ghana would continue the fight until the battle against poverty is won adding; “I hope 2019 will address some of the problems to harness welfare distribution across the country”.