We need safety nets for the poor

The major global economic slowdown that has hit Africa and other developing economies around the world presents a very frightening scenario that requires a rethinking of national development strategies.

Without doubt, the economic meltdown seems to be a predating creature that threatens to hunt down the gains made by the country over years of brain-racking policy decisions and painstaking sacrifices.

The World Bank has observed that the situation has the potential to scuttle efforts to end extreme poverty and has called for tough decisions to save the situation.

Such decisions mean investing in the people and building safety nets to prevent people from falling back into poverty.

A comprehensive report on poverty in Africa launched in Accra yesterday hailed the country’s strong economic growth which has contributed to the improvement in the health of the people and education in the past 20 years.

Indeed, it is contained in the record of development in sub-Saharan Africa that over the past 20 years, Ghana’s economy has almost always grown more quickly than the economies of other sub-Saharan countries and at rates similar to those of lower middle-income countries.

But the situation, as the macro-economic figures indicate, falls short of translating into the tangible indications of general improvement in the lives of people, both in rural and urban areas.

Be that as it may, poverty is and will continue to be the lack of access to the basics of life, a situation that people continue to encounter day in day out, even in the urban areas.

The country’s medium-term plan revolves around the projection that about 51 per cent of Ghanaians already live in urban areas, and aims at increasing per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to $2,300 by 2017 and $3,000 by 2020.

However, the fact remains that a good number of people who are considered to be living in urban areas have migrated from the rural areas in search of greener pasture.

A good number of these people continue to grapple with finding decent accommodation, sanitation facilities, access to health care and a host of factors that make them candidates who have migrated from the net of poverty.

The Daily Graphic believes that the real strive to eradicate poverty must be dictated by improved standards of living for majority of people through ensuring their access to basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing.

Even in the most advanced economies, there are sizeable pockets of very poor persons whose demographics defy the very status of the country at large, but there are safety nets to provide for their needs.

The Daily Graphic, while not deriding the fact that gains have been made, believes that we should not be swooned by macro-economic statistics but rather be objective enough to appreciate that development is about ensuring the well-being of the people and not the mere provision of physical infrastructure.