Abdulai Zulkaninu
Wa, March 21 2024, Padfm.com.gh
The STAR-Ghana Foundation, a national center for active citizenship and philanthropy, in partnership with
CDA-Ghana has organized a zonal consultative and town hall meeting for the Upper West and Savannah regions at the Upper West Regional House of Chefs conference hall to solicit the burning concerns or issues of citizens for redress by political parties in their manifestos for the 2024 general elections.
Mr Frank Amoateng, a member of the STAR-Ghana team, in a brief welcome address encourages all the participants to actively contribute to national and community issues to help government execute policies and programs that are beneficial to the country. He added that no citizen should be left behind and that Ghanaians must voice out their burning community development issues to pave the way for them to be included in political parties manifestos.
He expressed gratitude to the chiefs and people of the two regions for turning up for the meeting and appealed to them to help make the program a success.
The meeting saw presentations and discussions on the three (3) policy briefs; education, health and social protection.
The meeting provided the needed platform for citizens to share their challenges regarding access to quality education, public health services and social protection to shape the direction of political parties manifestos in Ghana.
The session held in Wa brought together the chiefs and queen mothers from both regions, students, CSOs, youth, people with disabilities, education and health staff, women groups, among others, to mainly contribute to the
STAR-Ghana Manifesto Influencing Initiative for this year’s general elections.
Some of the main issues identified under education include poor administration of the Free Senior High school policy, the teacher-student gap ratio, inadequate distribution of educational infrastructure, learning materials, among others.
On public health services, issues identified include poor reproductive health education for youth, struggling National Health Insurance Scheme, discrimination against persons with disabilities, inadequate and unfair distribution of specialists, inadequate medical equipment at some health facilities.
The three (3) policy briefs on education, health and social protection would be produced using the outputs and presented to the political parties and their presidential candidates for inclusion into their manifestos.
Divine Akpe, Caesar Kaba, Emmanuel Kumi did detailed presentation on education, health and social protection respectively.
