N/R forum on poverty reduction held in Tamale

Tamale, Jan 22, GNA - The Tamale Municipal Chief Executive, Mr Iddrisu Adam, has said that though several efforts had been made to get the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) concept widely disseminated public knowledge of the objectives and strategies had been weak.

"This makes public awareness of the GPRS, particularly the ordinary Ghanaian in the communities who ought to be the prime beneficiary, extremely limited."

This was contained in an address read for him at a day's Northern Regional forum on: "Impact of the District Assemblies' Common Fund on the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy" in Tamale on Thursday.

The National Association of Local Authorities of Ghana (NALAG), District Assemblies Common Fund secretariat and Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) jointly organised the forum with sponsorship by DACF and SNV.

Mr Adam told the forum that since the introduction of the DACF concept in 1993, almost all district assemblies had been able to improve the living conditions of their people.

"This is evidenced in the number of infrastructure in sectors such as health, education, water and sanitation where majority of the assemblies have spent most of their resources." he said.

Mr Adam said even though some significant gains had been made through these interventions there is still growing incidence of poverty resulting from the lack of significant expansion in productivity and employment opportunities.

"This situation has given rise to serious concern and the need to design appropriate policy interventions to guide the assemblies to take affirmative actions to expand the economic base of the districts and thereby create new revenue base for the assemblies".

He said even though guidelines for the disbursement of the DACF mandates all assemblies to set aside 20 per cent of their shares for the creation of Poverty Alleviation Fund, the response from the beneficiary public, in terms of judicious use of the fund has not been the best. "The impact therefore has not been up to expectation.''

Mr Adam suggested that for the DACF to make any meaningful impact on the GPRS there is the need for the introduction of some dynamism into the formula for the sharing of the Fund.

In an address, Mr Wigbert Dogoli, President of NALAG Executive Council, said poverty and its related issues had currently assumed considerable urgency and attention on the international development scene and in the national body politic.

Mr Dogoli expressed the view that poverty and the HIV/AIDS pandemic are to some extent, bedfellows and therefore the energies being expended on fighting the pandemic must equally focus on addressing the poverty scourge.

"It seems to us at NALAG that the fight against poverty shall not succeed unless the government exhibits real political and financial commitment by adopting pro-poor planning, programming and strategies at all levels of governance with inputs from the poor and the marginalized".

Mr Sam Ocran, Programme Officer of SNV, said his organization is an international NGO committed to contributing to reducing structural poverty in Ghana and in 25 other developing countries.