Ghana must tackle high cost of living, unemployment in post MDG era – Report
A World Survey Report on Ghana has identified high cost of living,as well as the absence of capital and job opportunities as development priorities that must be tackled in the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) discussions.
The survey also identified access to finance, jobs and good governance as three key factors required for abating the constraints cited above.
The global citizen survey tagged “MY World” was initiated by the United Nations for its 194 member countries to capture the citizen’s priorities and views to inform the global leaders as they began the process of defining the new development agenda for the world.
In Ghana, the survey was facilitated by the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) in collaboration with the Ghana Statistical Service whose personnel did the data collection, analysis and contributed in the report writing, with supported from the United Nations Millennium Campaign.
Mr Ebow Duncan, Statistician of the Project, said an offline representative sample survey was conducted in all the 10 regions of the country between April and May 2013, based on the Ghana Living Standards Survey 6 (GLSS 6) framework.
He said in all, 3,600 households (8,388 respondents) were selected from 18,200 sampled households from the GLSS 6.
He noted that even though respondents identified the need to protect forests, rivers and oceans, they did not identify it as a constraint or development priority and stressed the need to work further to determine if that was as a result of low awareness or low appreciation of the links between these and climate change.
Mr Duncan said there was the need to interrogate the least scores in the research, including climate change, ICT and governance, and called on NGOs to work harder to create the necessary awareness on climate change and conservation of forests and river bodies.
“Consequently, government and development partners need to note the priorities of respondents and interrogate further why governance issues like transparency, corruption and accountability ranked low even though good governance was identified as one of the three top solutions,” he added.
The survey, he said, suggested the need for targeted advocacy to build and sustain appreciation and priority around climate change and civil society engagement in the multi-stakeholders in the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) discussions.
Mr Anis Haffar, an Educatiotnis, stressed the need to incorporate the community college concept in Ghana’s education system to provide skill training to the youth to make them employable and useful to the nation.
He also underscored the need to revamp the agriculture sector to create more jobs for the people and urged ISODEC to ensure that there was a national policy to get every school to define a project that would be related to the syllabus to sustain the appreciation in those areas.
Dr Esther Ofei Aboagye, Director of the Institute of Local Government Studies, also underscored the need for all stakeholders to do more advocacy, optimise the role of the media and create awareness for the people to demand commitment from their leaders.
Source: GNA