Household registration ends in Upper East Region
The Ghana National Household Registry (GNHR), under the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP) has ended its 38 days registration exercise in the Upper East Region.
The exercise which started on February 19, and ended on April 4 this year, saw 965 field staff comprising 22 District Coordinators, 135 Supervisors and 808 Enumerators deployed to all 13 Districts of the Region.
Ms Otiko Afisa Djaba, the Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection at a brief closing ceremony in Bolgatanga, said the MoGCSP established the GNHR to ensure that social protection benefits got to the people that really needed it.
“The GNHR therefore has a mandate to establish a single national household register from which all social protection programmes in Ghana will select their beneficiaries,” she said, and added that the completion of the exercise in the Region would set the pace to correctly and efficiently identify the recipients of social benefits.
Ms Djaba said the method used by the GNHR was aimed at enhancing transparency and accountability in selection of beneficiaries of social protection programmes across the Municipal and District Assemblies by establishing “credible, up-to-date single national household registry.”
She said 144,664 households out of a projected 210,000 were enumerated, “so far 1,694 communities had been completed out of 1,826. “We are still collating the data to sync other analyses needed to obtain the total figure for the exercise,” she added.
The Minister disclosed that there would be a special reporting format to capture areas where communities were left out, and said all District Liaison Officers across the Districts would act as intermediaries between the MoGCSP and the communities to ensure that they properly captured the people.
Ms Djaba expressed gratitude to stakeholders in the Region, staff of the GNHR and the field staff for their immense support during the entire exercise.
Mr Rockson Ayine Bukari, the Upper East Regional Minister on his part, thanked the MoGCSP and the World Bank for the exercise in the Region and underscored the importance of data collection in the development of a country such as Ghana.
He said data was used in planning all sectors of the economy, and provided the baseline to measure situations which helped to determine whether there was an indication of improvement or not.
“I am of the conviction that the Enumerators did their best to collect accurate data, and the Supervisors and Coordinators also did a great job to ensure that good quality job was done,” Mr Bukari said.
Mr Alhassan Abubakari Suwaidu, one of the Enumerators thanked the sector Minister and the MoGCSP on behalf of his colleagues for the opportunity given them to embark on the exercise, and appealed to the Minister to ensure that they all received their allowances.
Source: GNA