The Center for Democratic Development Ghana (CDD Ghana) has on 2nd May, 2023, held a stakeholder engagement forum to dialogue on measures to promote inclusiveness among marginalized groups in the Savannah Region.
The stakeholder meeting held at Damongo brought together stakeholders from academia, health, media, youth groups, municipal and district assembly officers among others to share ideas.
Speaking at the forum, Madam Regina Tetteh, the team lead for Social Inclusion and Gender said the aim of the program was to share ideas on a research report conducted by the Global Centre for Pluralism, Canada which assesses inclusiveness among the various marginalised groups to ensure peaceful co existence.
Addressing concerns on the report, she disclosed that their report findings actually reflect the happenings in society and called on governments at all levels to give attention to implementation of their policies targeting the promotion of fairer societies for all.
She said; “So very very unfortunately all these policies have not been well implemented and we continue to experience marginalization of ethnic groups, marginalization of certain groups, marginalization of women and girls.”
Rajvir Gill, programs Manager for Global Center for Pluralism took the participants through a presentation highlighting the not-for-profit group’s global pluralism monitor assessment report.
He underscored the need for governments at the central and sub national levels to do more to ensure diversity in the country in terms of breaching the gap between the south and the north divide.
He also said;
“There remains work to be done in the northern regions of the country to provide more doctors, more teachers, schools that are closer to children, more teachers that want to stay in the regions for long terms and also to ensure that specialization of hospitals. So there remains development issues of course ethnic minorities as well and we are seeing that there is disparity as well. More needs to be addressed.”
Mr Rajvir bemoaned the marginalization of women at all levels of the decision making processes.
The Municipal Development Officer of the West Gonja Municipal Assembly Musah Ibrahim also gave a presentation on infrastructure of education, health and other social services in the municipality.
He however ascribed the major cause of inadequate infrastructure to the late disbursement of funds to the sub national governments at the assemblies.
He said;
“That is why we are recurring our activities. So the activity that we were supposed to implement in first quarter if the money did not come. But when the money come in the second or third quarter we now pick the activity we were suppose to implement in first quarter”.
Source: nkilgifmonline.com
