Ghana unlikely to meet MDGS (28/02/09)

GHANA is unlikely to meet its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly in the areas of health and education by the year 2015, the monitoring report for 2008 has indicated.
"Were current rates of progress to be merely kept up, only a small number of targets would be reached for the country as a whole, in terms of health and education", the report stated.
The report further stated that, "Despite efforts to expand coverage of social interventions, real access remained patchy since significant pockets of communities and even entire districts lag behind the picture of progress as portrayed by national aggregate statistics".
The report which was launched in Accra last Thursday was part of a research conducted by SEND Ghana and Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR), a Non governmental organisation(NGO) on behalf of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).
The report suggested that the school feeding programme be accelerated in the three northern regions of the country where Catholic relief services and World Food Programme were phasing out their support.
It also called for the increase of the capitation grant to make the programme more relevant to schools’ funding needs.
The report recommended the capitation grant to be "indexed to inflation to protect its value and disbursed in a more timely fashion so as to prevent school authorities from using adhoc pupil based levies to raise funds".
It said to further improve prospects for achieving universal basic completion, there was the need to "accelerate action on complementary education opportunities for out-of-school children and hard-to-reach areas".
The report noted that poor districts were being left behind in the march to achieving the health goals.
It therefore stressed on the need to strengthen attention to preventive aspects, rooted in promoting the concept of the household as the fulcrum of health and augmented by a strategic campaign designed to empower communities to adopt more healthful behaviours.
It also called for sector policy to be aimed at bridging the equity gaps "by skewing investment in favour of the poorest districts and prioritising community-based strategies".
The Executive Director of ARHR, Ms Vicky Okine said monitoring MDG's was an activity under a broad campaign by the civil society to heighten awareness of civil society to government's commitments and obligations towards realising targets set under the MDGs.
She said information generated through the monitoring exercise would provide the civil society with the critical evidence useful for holding government to account.
She said the study which was undertaken in 2007 in three districts in Ghana which included Komenda Edina Eguafo Abirem (KEEA) in the Central Region, Kwahu North in the Eastern Region and Bongo in the Upper East Region which she described as the poorest districts in the country.
Ms Okine said the aim of the study was to gather data on government inputs and outputs in the health and education sectors, and also understand the impact of government’s intervention in health and education at the local level.
She said the information generated was intended to serve as a baseline data for monitoring Ghana's progress towards achieving the MDGs.
Presenting a review of the report, the Head of Research and Information, Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG), Professor Kwame A. Ninsin said the report exposed several challenges facing children, teachers and the educational infrastructure necessary for quality education.
He said children should have encouraging reasons to remain in school, be punctual, alert and be provided with conducive environments for studies, and receive quality teaching from qualified and highly motivated teachers.