The Chief of Staff, Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, has said Ghana is steadily working towards a comprehensive and universal social protection programme which is a requisite safeguard and a pedal to accelerate sustainable development.
According to her, this would guarantee that as much as possible, all members of society irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity, geographical location, education, disability and status in society live dignified lives.
Speaking at the 2021 UG Alumni Lecture, at Legon, under the theme: “Social Protection In Ghana: Are We On Track?” she noted that most importantly, it is the fundamental understanding of government that the most effective way of tackling poverty is to break the chain that passes it from one generation to the next and the systematic way of doing so is through education.
“Moreover, lessons from other countries’ social protection initiatives have underscored the relevance and the need to ensure sustained exit from poverty. It has been observed that provision of social assistance alone without the necessary skills for income generation does not provide a sustained exit from poverty,” she noted.
Osei-Opare added: “In view of this, the Government of Ghana has created pathways into the livelihoods programmes that are more sustainable towards economic growth and inclusive national development. Productive Inclusion has therefore been adopted as one of the effective and more sustainable means of addressing extreme poverty and vulnerability. Since 2020, under the Ghana Productive Safety Net Project (GPSNP) Ghana is rolling out Productive Inclusion strategy to provide and support graduated beneficiaries of LEAP to engage in more productive livelihood activities.”
Meanwhile, the Chief of Staff has urged the Gender, Children, and Social Protection Ministry to organise a national social protection dialogue to identify sustainable financing mechanisms and to unlock innovative ideas to tighten the delivery of Ghana’s social protection agenda so that nobody is left out.
She is confident such a national dialogue will also generate stakeholder commitment and explore sustainable public-private partnerships.
Source: Daily Mail GH
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