Forty districts benefit from $89m rural project

Forty (40) districts across the country have been selected to benefit from the $89 million Ghana Social Opportunities Project (GSOP), designed to fight rural poverty.

The five-year World Bank funded programme is providing support in the areas of tree planting, establishment of mango and citrus farms, irrigation facilities and improvement of feeder roads.

There is also a component dealing with social infrastructure including building of classrooms, teachers’ accommodation, basic health and nurses’ quarters as well as training and capacity building of the assemblies.

Ellembele, Upper Denkyira West, Nkoranza North, Pru, Atebubu, Atiwa and the Sekyere Afram Plains are among the beneficiaries.

Mr Charles Nayran, Kumasi District Coordinator of the GSOP, made this known at a day’s review workshop for the participating districts at Ejisu in the Ejisu-Juaben Municipality.

In attendance were district chief executives, coordinating directors and the district planning officers.

It provided the platform to assess the performance of the project, a-year-and-a-half into its implementation, and adopt effective measures to address the challenges.

The GSOP is meant to open up more opportunities to the rural poor to better the economic situation.

Mr Nayran said it was refreshing that since its started, all the districts had received some social infrastructure including teachers’ bungalows, classroom blocks and community-based health planning and services (CHPS) compounds and nurses’ quarters. There are also mango, tree plantations and citrus farms.

He underlined plans to closely monitor and supervise the projects to ensure that the vulnerable and the poor benefitted.

Dr Kwaku Agyemang Mensah, Ashanti Regional Minister, in a speech read for him, said the labour component of the project, if well implemented, could create job opportunities for the large army of the nation’s unemployed youth in the rural areas.

That could go a long way to stem the rural-urban migration.

He repeated the resolve of the government to give protection to the poor and the vulnerable.

Source: GNA