Veep launches National Household Registry

The country’s social protection strategy was given a major boost with the launch of the Ghana National Household Registry (GNHR) by the Vice-President, Mr Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, in Accra Tuesday.

The GNHR is the single household register which the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection has established with the purpose of setting up a database of households from which all social protection programmes in the country will select their respective beneficiaries.

It will also guide public policy planning in terms of research and development in social protection for the poor and the vulnerable.

Registry

Launching the registry, the Vice-President stated that it would improve the targeting of interventions and contribute to eliminating pockets of poverty.

The registry, he explained, identified vulnerable households for the effective targeting of social protection programmes for people who were most in need adding that “developing a national household registry is, therefore, an important element of effective social protection programmes”.

While expressing gratitude to the country’s development partners, especially the World Bank, for their support in the project, Mr Amissah-Arthur reiterated the government’s commitment to continually identify efficient ways to deliver on social intervention programmes.

Statistics

A Deputy Minister of Finance, Ms Mona Quartey, said in 2014, GH¢6.9 billion, representing 26.5 per cent of total government expenditure, was spent on poverty reduction activities.

This year, she said, GH¢7.6 billion, representing 22.1 per cent of planned total government expenditure, had been earmarked for pro-poor activities.

Ms Quartey, who was speaking on behalf of the Minister of Finance, Mr Seth Terkper, called for the sourcing of funds from the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund), the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) and the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) to undertake more targeted social protection expenditures.

The Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Victor Asare Bampoe, said the GNHR would contribute to ensuring that people were healthy to contribute to the socio-economic development of the nation.

He said health was the complete physical, mental and socio-economic well-being of an individual and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

He said the registering of all poor people in the country would help the Ministry of Health design appropriate health interventions for the vulnerable.

The Country Director for Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone of the World Bank, Mr Henry Kerali, called for collaboration among the National Identification Authority (NIA), the

Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and the National Health Insurance Scheme to ensure that the right people were registered and also that there was no duplication of efforts.

The Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, in a welcome address, noted that, “with the policy, legal and institutional arrangements, as well as the targeting unit, firmly in place, social protection in Ghana was ready to singlehandedly contribute to the elimination of all forms of poverty”.