The ugly trend of poverty is forcing some families in Ghana to cut the amount and quality of food they eat each day.
Meat, a source of protein, is no more an option in the menu of many families. People now opt for less nutritional meals – just to put something in the stomach— which has a bad effect on a child’s growth. It is therefore not surprising that about 22 per cent of children in Ghana below five years are suffering from stunted growth while one out of every nine Ghanaian children die of malnutrition before the age of five.
Government figures indicate a reduction in poverty from 39.5 percent in 1999 to 28.5 percent in 2006 but in absolute terms, poverty is invading the country like a swarm of locust. Ghana, a middle-income country and a signatory to the Millennium Development Goals, has less than five years to halve extreme poverty. Conditions are worst in the rural areas where a sizable number of Ghanaian still live on less than one dollar a day.
The situation is driving a growing number of children onto the streets of Accra with many young girls resorting to prostitution as a way to escape from poverty and cater for their families. In some extreme cases, parents themselves force their children especially girls out of school so that they can look for jobs to support the family. This trend, according to stakeholders, spells doom for Ghana’s economy in the future.
Who are Ghana's poor people?
Majority of Ghana’s poor are in the rural areas where close to 70 per cent of the population resides. Business Guide’s visit to places such as Northern, Upper East, Upper West, Volta, Central and Western Regions where livelihoods are more precarious, saw how people living in those areas are finding it very difficult to make ends meet. The ugly trend is most severe among children, disabled, old people and food crop farmers, who are mainly traditional small-scale producers. About six in ten small-scale farmers are poor, and many are women. In addition to their domestic chores, these women are responsible for about 60 per cent of agricultural production.
During a visit to Mandari in the Bole District, from where Vice President John Mahama hails, dozens of children could be seen playing in the dust. But these children have no biological parents to care for them. Looking after them is their grandmother, Chamunu Mari, a 66-year-old widow, who lost her son and his wife through sickness, leaving behind seven orphans under her care. She lives in one of the most dilapidated single rooms in the community with her seven grandchildren. The building could best be described as a death trap. Mari is unemployed and finds it very difficult to eat.
“My grandchildren and I have to eat once a day,” she said with tears streaming down her cheeks. She cannot even afford to buy soap. She was therefore using sand and water to wash her cooking utensils when this reporter visited her house.
“Poverty was there before I was born and it has become part of life. Poverty is going empty with no hope for the future and getting nobody to feel your pain. It is when your dreams go in vain because nobody is there to help you. Poverty is watching your relatives die in pain and in sorrow just because they couldn't get something to eat. Poverty is hearing your grandmothers and grandfathers cry out to death to come and take them because they are tired of this world. It is watching your own children and grandchildren die in your arms but there is nothing you can do,” Mari explains her situation.
Mari is not the only person in this state. Abdullah Mohammed is 15 years old and lives on the streets of Bolgatanga, the capital of the Upper East Region. He is a cobbler.
“Life in the village where I was born was very hard so I decided to follow my elder brother to Bolgatanga after my father died, with the hope of getting something better to do and send money to support our mother back home but unfortunately she also died three months after we left the village. So I was here with my elder brother all this while until he also died. I don't want to go back to the village because there is nothing better to do over there. I will like to go back to Senior High School but it is very expensive and I can't pay my school fees.”
Mohammed said business was good when his elder brother was alive but now people think he was too young and that he can't repair their shoes the way his brother did so they don't bring their shoes to him anymore.
“Life is hard but what can I do? I am not the only person like this. There are many children like me or even worse who live on the streets. I don't smoke but most of the children living on the streets smoke wee which makes them strong. Most of them are thieves and they rob people. I don't steal and I don't smoke. I only shine and repair shoes for people," the soft-spoken boy stated.
During our visit to the Western Region, this paper met Mr Ernest Nyamekeh who lives at Ankobrah, a fishing community. He is a widower, a virtually-impaired man who looks after two children. Most of the houses in this area are mud houses roofed with thatch. Since the area is also closed to the Ankobrah River, anytime the river overflows its banks, the place gets flooded and water enters his room. This has affected his health as he has scratches all over his body.
Forty-five-year-old Nyamekeh and his children live in a mud and thatch roofed house. The house contains three single rooms. Aside Nyamekeh and his children, is his elder sister, Akua Amoah, 55. His wife, who was the family’s sole provider, died after a short illness two years ago. After her death, Nyamekeh ventured into pillow-making to enable him to take care of his children but the business collapsed. Since then, he and the children have to depend on members of his household for survival.
Though, the two kids were also in school, Nyamekeh finds it difficult to provide them with their basic necessities. Sometimes, the children have to go to school on empty stomach.
“Poverty has really eaten deep into our lives. We sometimes eat twice a day,” he wept uncontrollably when narrating his ordeal.
In the Central Region, this reporter visited the Amisakyir community, a suburb of Cape-Coast which is near the Cape-Coast sea shore. Teenage pregnancy is very rampant in this area. Since most of the inhabitants here do not have places to sleep, they sleep on the roads in the night. Apart from the community being a teenage pregnancy zone, this paper observed that most of the children born in the area are disabled.
Aba Esibu, a 22-year-old single parent with three children, lives here. Out of Esibu’s three children, one is disabled and a sickler. Esibu does not know the whereabouts of the father of the three children. She and her children stay in a dilapidated family house about 30 people whose conditions are nothing to write home about. She single-handedly takes care of the children, though she sometimes receives help from her aged-mother and other philanthropists. Esibu’s children are not in school because it is not easy taking care of them. None of them is also registered with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) as at the time of filing this story.
Araba Kitiwa is a 22-year-old mother of three who also lives in the same community. Just like Esibu, Araba and her children also live in a cracked family house close to the sea. Araba’s husband rejected her because one of the children is a disabled. Since then, Araba said she has never heard of him again. Life becomes very difficult for her as she has no work to feed herself and the three children. Araba, her children, her sister and her mother, sleep in a single room.
“We find it very difficult to eat sometimes. We have to cut back at the quality and quantity of food we consume a day,” she said.
The story was not different from the Volta Region, where former President Jerry John Rawlings comes from. Here, majority of the population still wallow in extreme poverty even though government claims there has been substantial decline in the incidence.
Ms. Ahiable Sodahoe, 50 years, is a member of Adagbledu community, a suburb of Dzodze in the Volta Region. The major occupation of the people in the area is farming. She lives in a household of 12 members occupying two dilapidated single rooms. In the same household, is the husband of Sodohoe aged 75 years. Apart from the dilapidated rooms, other places in the house such as kitchen and bathroom look nauseating. Members of the household get their source of drinking water from a well which is not hygienic for human consumption. Sodahoe had three children all of whom have given birth and left their children in her care. All the mothers of these babies are nowhere to be found, she said. Sodahoe has to credit food before the entire household could eat.
“I am in abject poverty because I don’t have the money to set up myself and feed my family,” she added.
Atisu Butsomekpor Anthony, a 70-year-old man is another poor person in the region. The name, Butsomekpor literally means “think about tomorrow”. He lives at Aflagatigorme, a suburb of Aflao. Butsomekpor, who was a fisherman, could no longer go fishing because of his age. Consequently, he has to depend on benevolence to survive. He, together with his 15-year-old son, lives in a mud house roofed with thatch. The house has no place of convenience. Butsomekpor revealed that he and his son eat ‘gari’ (popularly known as food for the poor) most often to sleep.
“We sometimes prepare food without meat or fish. Had it not been God, my son and I would have been dead by now. Nature is not fair to some of us at all. I know a lot of people who are going through untold hardships. Consequently, they are forced to drop their children out of school,” Atisu lamented.
Why are Ghana's rural people poor?
According to government’s poverty reduction strategy paper (GPRS II), low productivity and poorly functioning markets for agricultural outputs are among the main causes of poverty especially in the rural areas. The document said small-scale farmers lacked technologies and inputs such as fertilizer and improved seed, which would increase yields.
This paper observed, during the visit, that only a small proportion of farmers in rural areas of the country have access to irrigation. Land ownership and land security are regulated by complex systems that vary widely. Many farmers lacked rural infrastructure and equipment for storing, processing and marketing their products.
Most inhabitants said rural infrastructure in Ghana had been neglected, while investments in health, education and water supply had largely been focused on urban areas.
“The government could play an important role in making farming a profitable business through access to financial services, farm inputs and linkages to agro processors and traders,” Ibrahim Siedu, a farmer in Navrongo stated.
What Is Government Doing To Help The Poor?
In March 2008, the government introduced the Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty (LEAP) programme as a social intervention to provide financial assistance to some extremely poor households in Ghana. More districts are expected to be added to the existing 76 districts nation-wide, which are already covered by the programme.
Beneficiaries of this social assistance scheme, orphaned and vulnerable children, persons with severe disabilities without productive capacity, and extremely poor persons above 65 years, receive free cash ranging from GH¢8 to GH¢15 every two months.
One eligible beneficiary in a household gets GH¢8, two eligible beneficiaries get GH¢10, three get GH¢12, while four or more beneficiaries in a household receive GH¢15.
A survey by BUSINESS GUIDE to some of the LEAP communities in Ghana some time ago revealed that there are changes in the lives of the beneficiaries, some of whom had been able to engage in some form of subsistence business ventures.
Recently, government injected $20 million into the LEAP programme to enable many vulnerable people in Ghana to benefit.
The amount, according to Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Joseph Yieleh Chireh, was part of the $89.1 million loan facility the government took from the World Bank to help streamline economic activities in northern Ghana and empower the vulnerable.
The Minister said each of the communities would take $3 million with 25 of them coming from the Upper West, Upper East and the Northern regions while the rest of the 15 would be selected from the other regions.
