By Mildred Siabi-Mensah /Veronica Baffour Kyei
Takoradi (WR), March 21, GNA – Mr Ali Eliasu, a Policy Analyst for Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), has called for the provision of Water and Sanitation Hygiene (WASH) facilities in all Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) funded educational projects nationwide.
There should also be diversification of the sources of funding for the Free Senior High School (Free SHS) policy so that there could be money available for critical infrastructural care in the educational sector, he said.
Mr Eliasu, made the call at the Stakeholder Forum on Gender Sensitivity Analysis of ABFA expenditures in Ghana.
He noted that, the call followed a study conducted by the ACEP on the Gender Sensitivity of ABFA major funded projects in Ghana.
The study showed that the disbursement of funds did not take cognicance of the expensive studies done on the existing gaps within the agriculture, health, and education sectors.
Mr Eliasu stressed that currently only 1.19 per cent of the ABFA funding in the education sector went into infrastructure.
On the Health sector, Mr Eliasu, recommended that the Community-Based Health Planning and Services (CHPs) compounds should be National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) accredited as an essential pro-poor service, to meet the needs of the vulnerable in society.
“We are also saying that some allocations should be made to ensure some basic maternity infrastructure because we find that just about 0.58 per cent of ABFA goes into infrastructure, whereas 29 per cent goes into nonmedical expenses such as the construction of office complexes and construction of car parks…”.
Mr Eliasu said this was not too plausible and went against the pro-poor spirit of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act.
He further recommended that the country ensured comprehensive gender mainstreaming and consultation of women, particularly in sub-sectors including irrigation development, agricultural mechanisation, fisheries, and aquaculture where men tend to dominate, particularly in the production segments.
The policy analyst added that about 80 per cent of women in agriculture also participated in agro-processing business and called for some prioritisation.
He also called for a value for money assessment in areas where ABFA funded irrigation projects were ongoing.
This is because irrigation projects within the agricultural sector received 70 per cent of all the allocations in the sector.
Hence, if there was starved investment in other sectors such as agro-processing, there should be a value for money assessment to ensure that the benefits intended by irrigation projects were met, he added.
GNA