By Solomon Gumah
Tamale, Nov. 28, GNA – Two institutions have called on the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to provide a workable plan on how would implement their social intervention policies if they win this year’s elections.
The institutions are the Coalition of NGOs Against Streetism (CONAS) and the Street Invest Network-Northern Sector.
The coalition, whose membership comprises the Centre for Development and Policy Advocacy (CEDEPA), the Centre for Community Initiatives Against Human Trafficking (CIATH), Sung Foundation, the Youth Voices Initiatives Ghana (YOVI-Ghana), the African Development Organization for Migration (AFDOM), Chance for Children, Maltiti Child Foundation, Northern Needy Child Foundation, made the call at a press briefing in Tamale.
The briefing formed part of the Youth Engagement for Inclusive Democracy Project, which is being implemented by CEDEPA and partners.
Mr. Alhassan Ziblim, a Research Fellow and Project Lead at CEDEPA, who read the statement during the press briefing, said this became necessary after thorough analysis of both NPP and NDC manifestos on whether there was a clear sustainability plan in terms of funding and logistics to sustain the implementation of their policies.
He said the analysis showed the NPP manifesto had 10 social protection policies to improve the well-being of street-connected children.
He said out of the 10 policies, only three representing 30 per cent, had specific interventions or activities that could be implemented to achieve the policy objectives, adding the remaining 70% of the party’s social protection policies relating to street children were not backed with sustainable activities to help realise the policy objective.
He said out of the 10 social protection policies, only one had been clearly aligned with the mandate of a specific state institution or agency, which could champion its implementation.
Mr. Ziblim said whilst the NDC had a total of 13 social protection policies to improve the well-being of street-connected children, eight of them contained specific interventions that could be implemented to achieve the policy objective.
He said out of the 13 policies, only three representing 23% had been clearly aligned with the mandate of specific state institution or agencies, which could champion their implementation.
He said “On the back of the aforementioned reasons, we are calling on the Presidential Candidates of both NPP and NDC to re-examine their manifesto policies on social protection towards street children.”
GNA