Prof Aryeetey calls for national co-ordination of devt

Professor Ernest Aryeetey, Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana (UG), has called on the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC); to coordinate efforts at solving the country’s social development problems.

Speaking at the launch of Ghana Social Development Outlook (GSDO) 2014, a research report produced by the UG’s Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), Prof Aryeetey said most of the problems hindering social development that had been identified in the report were not new but ones that had persisted for more than 30 years, giving the impression that no efforts had been made to address them.

He said successive governments had approached the problems in different ways with different results, but had not tied all the interventions into a broader social development agenda, so expenditure on various sectors such as education, water, housing and health had increased remarkably but with no real outcomes.

“We are spending on education without any specific programme in mind. What do we want our universities to do for us? What do we want our polytechnics to do for us? We do not know so everyday a new ministry of education comes and tells us what to do and we all move in that direction. How does it fit into our social development agenda? That is what the NDPC should be doing” he said.

Prof Aryeetey said the persistence of the problems was not for a lack of efforts but rather a lack of coordination in the efforts.

“That’s why the school system for instance is dysfunctional, and until we deal with such things, we would come back in two years and hear the situation is still the same.”

Launching the GSDO 2014, he noted that there was often lamentation in the country about the absence of relevant data for policy making and for research and blame institutions for not willing to share data but rather an absence of such data.

“You can’t give what you don’t have,” he noted and commended ISSER for the efforts in the last few years to bridge the gap and make data easily available.

He called on other public institutions to produce data, analysis and share it.

The GSDO 2014 is the second in a series inspired by the ISSER to support and influence social development with pertinent and evidence-based discourse, analysis and recommendations.

The maiden edition - GSDO 2012 was launched in 2013 and focused on documenting and analysing social policies and their outcomes.

The current GSDO looks at how activities and developments since then, including efforts to meet the outstanding Millennium Development Goals, have impacted on social development and what issues are foremost in Ghana’s social space.

Each chapter of the 12-chapter outlook focuses on specific areas of social development, which fit into three main areas of social development and policy: material conditions, quality of life and sustainability.

Prof Felix Asante, Director of ISSER said although the report sought to address issues including an expansion of tertiary education, with increasing participation of private entities, improving healthcare delivery especially in terms of accessibility, and improving water and sanitation, there were still problems such as inequitable distribution of schools and questions of quality and funding.

The GSDO 2014 highlights the disadvantaged position of some segments of the population in social development indicators including women and girls as well as children, people with disabilities, the poor and aged and special populations like those in prisons and leprosaria.

It recommended, among other things that a more holistic reckoning be made and solutions found to key social development issues.

It also recommended that given the realities on the ground regarding youth including graduate under-employment and unemployment, Ghana Statistical Service should increase its window period for tracking the problem.

“Finally, given the congruent nature of the social development issues, it is strongly recommended that painstaking efforts be made to promote their interconnectivity, with possibly, the setting up of a special desk under the auspices of the National Development Planning Commission and the appropriate Parliamentary Committee to track the interconnected impact of several of these thematic areas of social life in Ghana” the report concluded.