‘Expand social intervention programmes’

The Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Employment, Social Welfare and State Enterprises, Mr Joseph Amenowode, has called for the expansion of social intervention programmes in the country to cover more vulnerable people.

According to him, if those who needed social intervention were not captured, they would become social misfits. 

Mr Amenowode, who is the Member of Parliament for Afadjato South, said this in an interview with the Daily Graphic at the just-ended meeting of the United Nations Commission for Social Development held in February in New York.

He was of the view that, at least, social intervention programmes in the country, including the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), should be expanded to cover 20 per cent of the population.

“ The government must find money to support social protection programmes,” he said.

He added that for peace to reign in any “serious country”, there should be money for social protection.

“If the vulnerable do not have, the haves will not sleep,” he said, adding that it was a social inevitability as the vulnerable would always find ways to eat.

He said most criminals were of youthful ages and that a country with a good social protection programme in the area of education would solve 70 to 80 per cent of its problems in the area of youth delinquencies.

He, therefore, called for additional funding to back social protection programmes in the country.

According to him, money from oil revenues which was to fund such programmes was yet to be sourced.

Writer's email-rebecca.quaicoe-duho@graphic.com.gh