Oye Lithur outlines blueprint for Gender Ministry
Nana Oye Lithur, Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MGCSP), on Tuesday outlined dynamic transformational blueprint to promote gender mainstreaming in the national development processes to engender the national budget.
She said the Ministry would coordinate the development, review and implementation of social development policies; enhance the capacity of communities to identify, plan, and implement sustainable socio-economic activities; and promote the generation of sex disaggregated data to guide interventions.
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency on her first day at work, on Tuesday, which started at 0745 hours, Nana Oye Lithur said the Ministry would counsel, guide and refer socially and economically distressed members of society to the appropriate bodies.
She said the MGCSP would promote women entrepreneurship, enhance collaboration and partnership between stakeholders, for sustainable development, provide rehabilitation services to children in statutory institutions and supervise services to children in conflict with the law.
Nana Oye Lithur said the Ministry would provide alternative family care services, update the register of child charitable institutions in the country, and to regulate and coordinate activities and programmes of those organisations.
She explained that the new Ministry forms the basis for holistic strategic plan for realignment and harmonization of the former Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Department of Social Welfare and other key social intervention programmes, being implemented by government under the Better Ghana Agenda.
Nana Oye Lithur said the Gender arm of the new Ministry is mandated to promote gender equality and safeguard the welfare and participation of women in social, political and economic development process.
She said the arm is responsible for gender mainstreaming, social empowerment of women and girls and bring men into the mainstreaming framework.
Nana Oye Lithur said the Children arm is mandated to provide care, support and protection for children and would be responsible for all matters pertaining to family and child welfare, integrated early childhood development, probation and after care of juvenile offenders as well as other generic social work.
The Social Development component is mandated to promote and coordinate volunteerism and volunteer services, co-ordinate the development, review and implementation of social development policies, and enhance the capacity of communities to identify, plan, and implement sustainable socio-economic activities.
Nana Oye Lithur said the new Ministry would enhance collaboration and partnership with stakeholders for sustainable development.
She said social protection arm will coordinate and implement existing social protection programmes – the rationale is for government to effectively and efficiently mitigate and reduces vulnerabilities and poverty that affects people’s wellbeing.
Nana Oye Lithur said: “This is founded on Ghana’s Shared Growth and Development Agenda…I will adopt all hands-on-deck mechanism to inject the dynamism and advocacy of the civil society into the mainstream public sector operations”.
She called for cooperation from all departmental heads under the Ministry and said: “this is a new direction we must all work together to achieve the overall objective of fulfilling the Better Ghana Agenda”.
Nana Oye Lithur, a hard core civil society human rights advocate, acknowledged the worth of knowledge within the public sector, stressing “we need to change our attitude and work hard to justify the confidence reposes in us by the state”.
Source: GNA