By Philip Tengzu, GNA
Tamale, (N/R), Feb. 18, GNA – The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP) and Information Services Department (ISD), has organised a day’s workshop for the rollout a nationwide public education and sensitisation campaign on the Single Window Citizens Engagement Service (SWCES).
Regional and Metropolitan, Municipal and District Information Officers from the Upper East; the Ahafo, Bono; Bono East; Northern Region; Upper West; Savannah and North East Regions participated in the training, which was held in Tamale.
The Gender Ministry birthed the Single Window Citizens Engagement Service under its Social Protection Directorate as part of integrated efforts to bolster the coordination of social protection interventions in Ghana.
The SWCES comes on stream as a single-entry platform for the reporting and collection of grievances relating to the country’s major social protection programmes and systems including the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), the Labour-Intensive Public Works (LIPW), the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) and the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) among others.
In a presentation on the SWCES, Madam Naa-Dedei Antie of the Gender Ministry, disclosed that the SWCES has some laudable objectives, which included: increasing transparency and accountability in the operation of social protection services, simplifying the administrative processes and procedures and reducing time and cost of service provision.
She added that the SWCES would also ultimately improve the quality of service provided to citizens and beneficiaries.
Dr Nafisa Mahama, the Acting Director of the Information Services Department, observed that the ISD has had successful and results-filled collaborations with the Gender Ministry and other institutions in the past.
She, therefore, stressed that the choosing of ISD again to undertake the SWCES campaign certainly hinged on those past success stories of her outfit.
Dr. Mahama vouched for the credibility and work ethic of the ISD officers saying: “Given the needed logistics and support, they can perform and perform beyond anybody’s imagination.”
She added that as the information officers had now been schooled and equipped with the core messages and objectives of the SWCES, there was no reason to doubt their ability to deliver on the assignment.
According to her, one vital thing that made the ISD’s public campaigns rich and unique was the quality feedback the officers received on the field, noting that such feedback often served as important pointers as to how effective a particular intervention or programme was going and what needed to be amended to induce the desired impact.
Dr Mahama indicated that the SWCES could be likened to the national information contact centre that was opened and manned by the ISD during the COVID-19 pandemic, assuring the Gender Ministry that the ISD was familiar with such call management centres.
GNA