By Rachel Kakraba
To bridge the funding gap of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, a summit for key and relevant stakeholders is being convened in Accra. Participants will share ideas on how to mobilise revenue to complement government’s efforts at providing social services to low-income families.
This year’s Summit is themed “Strengthening Resource Mobilization for Effective Social Service Delivery”.
The two-day event was an opportunity for the discussants to agree on the key priority issues on financing social and child protection programmes.
Addressing participants, the Chairperson on Gender and Children Committee of Parliament, Francisca Oteng-Mensah, said the summit will provide an opportunity for innovative ideas to support social intervention initiatives of the government. She said the knowledge summit will enable the sector ministry to expand social intervention programmes to support vulnerable populations.
“When we look at the various social protection programmes for instance Leap, School feeding, free SHS, NHIS all these programmes are interventions that are in support of the vulnerable, persons living with disability most especially women. We don’t want to leave the entire burden to central government. We want to take this opportunity to engage some stakeholders, some donor partners, some private entities to see how best the can support these programmes so that the government can spread its tentacles across.”
Madam Oteng-Mensah said government is already overburdened, a reason such key knowledge-sharing experience. She said the summit will also deliberate on issues of accountability to ensure judicious use of funds.
She said the Gender and Children Committee of Parliament will continue to advocate for adequate budgetary allocation for the sector ministry.
“The Committee can add its voice so that the amount in certain sectors or certain departments can be increased to spread and have a lot of beneficiaries. The committee is so much committed to this course because most people that will be beneficiaries of this are women, children and the vulnerable in society.”
Head of Gender Unit United Nations Fund on Population, UNFPA, Dr. Doris Mawuse Aglobitse said the worsening global economic crisis is a wake-up call to ensuring sustainable investment in social protection. She called on stakeholders to support the Gender Ministry in its quest to create an inclusive society.
“The current impact of the global economic crisis on women, girls, gender equality and Gender Based Violence advocates for sustained investment in this area.”
Touching on this year’s theme, “Strengthening Resource Mobilization for Effective Social Service Delivery,” Dr. Aglobitse said it was appropriate as it will ensure an inclusive society.
“It’s therefore important that we work with the Ministry of Gender Children and Social Protection to fulfil its mandate of creating an all-inclusive society, that centres on the needs of persons living in situations of extreme poverty, vulnerability and exclusion. This also calls for adequate investment in Social Protection including gender equality and prevention and management of Gender Based Violence.”
Acting Director Dept of Children, Florence Ayisi Quartey, said Ghana has made significant gains in Gender protection. She pointed out collaboration with the private sector to enable the ministry achieve it targets on various intervention.
The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, convened the two-day summit with support from the World Bank, United Nations Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF), Ghana, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).