WFP supports 4 communities in UW with cash
The World Food Programme (WFP) has presented cash incentives totalling GH¢1 million to more than 2,000 residents of four communities in the Sissala East District of the Upper West Region.
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The donation was in recognition of their contribution to the construction and rehabilitation of small dams and dugouts in the area, and is in line with the WFP’s objective of improving livelihood, promoting food security and nutrition, and strengthening the resilience of communities to climate shocks such as drought.
The beneficiaries were drawn from the Nabugubelle, Taffiase, Kassanpouri and Jijen communities.
Asset creation
The WFP Country Director, Ms Mutinta Chimuka, said the cash payments were made under the WFP's asset-creation programme, which is being funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development of Canada.
She explained that the asset-creation projects sought to help people to build community assets which members believed could improve their livelihood generally.
She said the construction of the small dams, which was done over a nine-month period, was started during the off-farming season to provide the youth with work in their communities to discourage migration to the urban centres.
Ms Chimuka also said agriculture was important to the future of Ghana that was the reason the WFP had partnered district assemblies and the private sector to ensure the success of the asset creation programme.
Agriculture and nutrition
She emphasised the link between agriculture and good nutrition and expressed the hope that the dams would impact on the people's nutritional needs through the cultivation of fresh vegetables even during the dry season.
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She said there was the need to construct more and larger dams for irrigation purposes, and to build fish ponds to meet the people's protein needs.
At Nabugubelle, a member of the community, Mariama Seidu, who received GH¢674 for her work on the new dam, which the WFP and the Sissala East District Assembly had helped her community to build, expressed the hope that the dam would enable them to irrigate vegetable gardens during the dry season when there is usually no work and people migrate down south.
The Chairman of the asset-creation committee at Nabugubelle, Sheibu Bafuochal, said before the dugout was constructed, it was difficult to get water for domestic needs, but acknowledged that the dam would help them to undertake the dry season farming, and appealed to the district assembly to help them with irrigation and tools to work with.