MPs attend workshop on gender skills project

Daily Graphic (soc) Tues. July 13/10

Story: Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho
A Member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Gender and Children, Mr Kobla Mensah Woyome has called for a better and more effective data collection system that will be reflective of the actual poverty levels in the country.
He said that was necessary to ensure that vulnerable people most of whom were women and children, received social interventions which would positively affect their livelihoods.
According to him, a project which was intended to benefit 59 needy districts in the country, did not capture some of the poor districts which had been clasified as poor under the Ghana Living Standard Survey, and were benefiting from the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP).
Mr Woyome made the call when he chaired a sensitisation seminar organised by the Gender Responsive Skills and Community Development project (GRSCDP), for members of the committee in Accra at the weekend.
According to him, the lack of an effective and co-ordinated data in the country was one of the major causes of under development among people especially, women and children and therefore called on the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to compile and harmonise data that would be reflective of the actual poverty levels in the country.
The seminar was aimed among other things at sharing information with the members to enhance their knowledge about the project and also to establish a platform for dialogue and consensus building for the successful implementation of the project.
The four-year project which is being funded by the Government of Ghana and the African Development Bank (AfDB) is aimed at promoting a gender and equitable socio-economic development through institutional capacity building for the overall improvement of women’s employment and entrepreneurship.
According to him, linking data would help identify areas where poverty was endemic to enable people in such areas to benefit from social intervention programmes for them to improve on their lives.
According to Mr Woyome, the need for more effective data had become necessary since most pro-poor communities did not enjoy the needed interventions that would help them to come out of their poverty, because they had not been identified.
He said if the country had a viable data on poverty levels in the various communities, it would make it easier for such communities to benefit from social interventions that would help improve on the livelihood of the people.
He added that poverty and gender inequality was among the most persistent and pervasive global challenges of the century and as such there was the need to make gender issues the core of all programmes and structures geared towards the socio-economic development of the country.
“Just as gender inequality exacerbates poverty, poverty contributes to increased gender disparity”, he said adding that gender equality was not only a women’s issue and therefore should also concern and fully engage men and boys who can contribute to advancing gender equality as individuals within the family, community and in all spheres of society.
The Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs, Ms Juliana Azumah Mensah in a welcome address said the project was aimed at promoting equitable socio-economic development that was gender sentive through improved national capacities for enhancing gender mainstreaming, improved access to quality skills training for gainful employment and entrepreneurial development of women.
This she said would increase women’s access to financial and non-financial services for sustainable development that would equally benefit men and women, adding that the focus of the project was to alleviate poverty among women at both national and local levels.
The Project Manager, Mr Forster Kwame Boateng who gave a general overview of the project, said it was aimed at achieving three main components which were; Institutional strengthening for enhancing gender mainstreaming; support to skills training and entrepreneurial development and; a project management.
He said aside supporting 59 districts within the 10 regions, the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC), four Community Development Colleges, micro-finance institutions, project staff of other African Development Bank funded projects in the country, business development service providers and micro and small scale women entrepreneurs, would directly benefit from the project.
He said the project, which would be reviewed annually, had a monitoring and evaluation component which would ensure that it impacted positively on the lives of beneficiaries.
The MPs in their various contributions expressed concern about the manner of selection for beneficiary communities saying that they were not involved in the selection process, They however said they were ready to support the project to achieve its overall objective.