The Minister-designate for Gender, Children, and Social Protection, Agnes Naa Momo Lartey, has outlined plans to address key challenges within her portfolio, including school feeding programs and access to financial support for women in business.
She acknowledged the current bottlenecks in the school feeding program and capitation grants, stating, “The intention is to address the current bottlenecks that we have around school feeding and capitation grants. In our manifesto, we want to extend to even the private schools. From my checks, or my checks from the ministry, there’s an indication that about 40 days have been paid, 31 days in arrears, in terms of what is owed the caterers.”
She expressed her commitment to finding lasting solutions, adding, “I think with me, one of the things I know is my strength is to dialogue with whoever is involved for us to find a lasting solution. But once there’s been some payments made, I believe that His Excellency has committed to ensuring that not only the implementation of the school feeding goes on smoothly, but also the quality is assured.”
She affirmed her intention to work with the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education to clear outstanding payments and strengthen the program further.
On women in business, she highlighted a government initiative to establish a women-focused banking program explaining that “A banking program that is supposed to actually support women in business, unlike the traditional banking system, is supposed to be quite flexible for women to access loans.
One of the challenges that we have when it comes to women in business is accessibility to loans and other logistics that support our businesses. Where you have to bring collateral, it’s a difficult thing. So this is women-focused with, like I said, flexible terms, and also low-interest rates, she noted.
She noted that the program would receive funding from the Government of Ghana , donor partners, and the private sector, stating, “And from what His Excellency said, the President said, it’s going to be from Government of Ghana. So, like many other programs and activities of the ministry, it’s going to be intersectoral, like leaning on the Ministry of Finance to provide the Government of Ghana portion.”
And I’m expecting that, God willing, when the finance minister presents the budget, this will be adequately captured in the budget.”
She also expressed optimism about collaborative efforts, adding that there are other stakeholders like donor partners and the private sector who are expected to come on board to ensure that this is adequately catered for.
The Minister-designate concluded by acknowledging the positive impact this initiative would have on women entrepreneurs in the informal sector, stating, “The women of Ghana are grateful, and we look forward to having the bank established so that we can grow our businesses as most women are in the informal sector.”
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Source: Comfort Sweety Hayford/ATLFMNEWS
