‘Parliament will give due attention to Social Protection Bill’
The Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Employment, Social Welfare and State Enterprises, Mr Joseph Amenowode, has assured of the speedy passage of the National Social Protection Bill when it is presented before Parliament this year.
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That, he said, was because members of the committee working on it had been adequately sensitised to the need to provide safety nets for the vulnerable in society as a means of social protection.
Mr Amenowode gave the assurance when he spoke on the theme, “Achieving SDG 1: Reviewing processes towards building a resilient and efficient social protection system in Ghana”, at a side event organised by Ghana at the ongoing 54th Session of the United Nations Commission on Social Development (CSoCD 54) in New York.
Social Protection policy
The National Social Protection Policy drafted by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection has already received the approval of the Cabinet.
The policy provides a framework for a coherent social protection system and will provide mechanisms to protect persons living in situations of extreme poverty and related vulnerability and exclusion.
It is intended to create an all-inclusive and socially empowered society and help eliminate the inequality gap in the country.
Explaining how the policy would be beneficial to all, Mr Amenowode, who is also the Member of Parliament for Afadjato South in the Volta Region, said social protection was a means to invest in the future safety of society hence the worldwide recognition to expand social protection interventions.
He underscored the need for people to see social protection as a means to develop the human resource and economic well-being of the citizens.
Political Commitment
In a related development, the Director of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Liaison Office in New York, Ms Carla Mucavi, who spoke on the theme, “Rethinking and strengthening social development in the contemporary world” at the CSoCD54 session, said for social protection programmes to succeed, there was the need to ensure political commitment.
She called for the fostering of partnerships and ensuring adequate funding to implement the programmes and projects that could ensure the reduction and mitigation of inequalities and improve the living conditions of the vulnerable population, particularly those living in the rural areas of developing countries.
She said the vulnerable population constituted the majority of the world’s food insecure and hungry population.
Ms Mucavi said evidence had shown that reliable and regular social protection schemes could help poor communities to overcome financial constraints and manage risks that usually discouraged them from pursuing higher returns.
She noted that failure to address inequality at the global level could endanger the success of the 2030 development agenda, stressing that social protection systems were critical in fostering progress towards eradicating hunger and poverty in a number of developing countries.
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