Potentials For Poverty Reduction

The Berekum Municipality abounds in potentials and opportunities, but there are few constraints that must be overcome to enable the Municipality increase its pace of poverty reduction.

It was realized after both the Municipality level dialogue and community level dialogues that the poor in the Berekum have certain inherent potentials which need to be tapped.  It also came to light that the Municipality abounds in a lot of resources which can be utilized to alleviate the poverty status of the people.

There are appreciable and fairly distributed health facilities in the Municipality to provide the minimum health services.  There are well organised WATSANs Committees with bye-laws to operate the Water systems provided.

Among some of the inherent potentials of the poor are:

•  Contribution at forum,
• Preparedness to learn (functional skills),
• Offer of their labour for community services and facilities after proper animation.

Availability of potentials within the Municipality which can be utilized by the poor to improve their status are:

• Abundance of farm lands

•  Availability of state institutions to assist the poor – social safety nets to reduce poverty in the district, eg. Extension services to provide support to farmers, to adopt new technologies and improved seeds.  The proposed establishment of a cassava processing plant at Berekum and two (2) other proposed viable factories will help boast up production and employment.

• Fairly Good Road Networks to facilitate access to services and facilities.

Constraints

Some of the Constraints faced by the poor in the Berekum Municipality are:

1. In ability to integrate properly in the society,
2. Stigmatization against the poor in the Society,
3. Lack of representation of the poor in governance.

The poor lacks the ability and the confidence to stand for public position in Municipality, they do not command the respect to present and be represented in decision making in the district.

1. There is a high degree of ignorance among the poor.
2. Lack of access to market for the goods produced by the poor.
3. Inadequate Micro credit facilities.
4. Unfavourable Financial Management Policies towards the poor.
5. Certain inimical government politics which inhabit the growth and development of poor eg. the cashes carry system.
   

Municipal profiling
Municipal Poverty Profiling

This section deals with the Municipal’s situation, perception and understanding of poverty by decentralized departments in the district. 

Dialogue With Municipal level Stakeholders
 
The outcome of Municipal level stakeholders’ dialogue including Central Administration of the District Assembly and other Decentralized Departments are presented below Tentative Poverty Pockets` Tentative Poverty Pockets Description Based on Geographical Situation and Perception of Decentralized Departments (including Central Administration)

Analysis of the Municipal level dialogue led to delineation of the Municipality into Four (4) Tentative Poverty Pockets (kindly refer to page 16 for Tentative Poverty Pockets Map). This is based on similarities of Characteristics within each poverty pocket. The Tentative Poverty pockets and their Characteristics can be seen below.

Four (4) tentative poverty pockets were derived based on the outcome of the Municipal level stakeholders dialogue and Geographical situations of sub-District Level structures.

Dialogue With Community Level Stakeholders

The Municipal Poverty Planning Team embarked on community level dialogue at the sub-district levels in order to understand the dynamics of poverty and how they are being perceived by the people who are actually affected and infected.  This assisted in the design of appropriate Programmes and projects for poverty reduction within the District.

Selection Of Communities For Community Level Dialogue
    
Selection of communities for the community level stakeholder dialogue was based on Tentative Poverty Pockets derived after the Municipal Level Stakeholders dialogue and one day workshop involving extended participants and stakeholders. 

Two communities in each pocket were selected for the community level dialogue. One sub-District capital and one other community within each pocket were selected.