The Minister of Gender and Social Protection, Madam Cynthia Mamle Morrison, has urged Municipal and District Assemblies (MDAs) in Upper East Region to use the Ghana National Household Register (GNHR) for their research and planning.
She said the register when used effectively would help planners of assemblies to locate and understand the needs of poor people and their communities.
This would make it easy for the provision of social interventions such as education, health and livelihood empowerment initiatives to improve their lives.
Madam Morrison who was speaking at a one-day GNHR data dissemination workshop in Bolgatanga noted that the National Household Register was a chief driver for national development and a major tool for developing public policy management for social protection programmes.
The GNHR could be used to formulate programmes that would create grounds for public policy management to build effective social intervention systems to empower the neediest in society.
The mandate of GNHR is in line with government policies to develop an integrated programme for the registration and selection of all persons including school children, persons with disabilities and others facing chronic poverty into a common database for the purpose of targeting them for LEAP and other social protection interventions, to improve their lives.
“The GNHR will be used to research and develop areas of social protection for the poor and vulnerable and that will go a long way to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the numerous social protection programmes,” she added.
Dr Prosper Laari, the National Coordinator of GNHR, in a presentation said a total of 184,125 households were enumerated in the region and about 58 per cent of them were headed by males.
Only 21 per cent of the households were classified as urban, 28 per cent extremely poor and 31 per cent being non-poor.
He called on the MDAs, Academia, and Civil Society Organizations to use the data for research and planning for the development needs of the people.
According to Dr. Laari, 6.7 per cent of household heads were elderly and 3.4 per cent living with disabilities while 15 per cent of households were benefiting from at least one social programme, and a total of 17.4 per cent benefiting in all social protection programmes.
The workshop brought together participants from the academia, CSOs, Municipal and District Chief Executives from the region, the Media, planners from the various MDAs and staff of the Ministry of local government among others.