Link Between Community Needs And Aspirations And Review Of Performance Of 2003 – 2005 Plans.

 
With increases in population and increasing awareness of the citizens through civil engagements by NGOs and other governmental agencies, the demands of the communities keep increasing. This is aggravated by bad weather situation, growing deterioration of the lands especially around densely populated communities, the need to live improved and better lives have increased the demand for certain facilities by communities. 

Communities now have high hopes of getting some kind of facilities from the District Assembly. Though the last plan performed well, resources constraints could not make some community needs to be met. These have the effect of augmenting the demands of the current plan so as to satisfy the roll over communities. 

In all school blocks, health needs, farm inputs and rural access as well as water and sanitation top the request of communities that are looked up to for support over the next planned period of 2006 to 2009. To solve some of these problems in a much more cost effective way, communities are being considered on pairing bases for facilities especially school blocks since some communities cannot feed a complete school all alone. 

Where very successful boreholes are hit, the plan is to pipe the water to neighbouring communities with serious difficulties of achieving successes.   CHIPs centres will be set to draw health services closer to the people and on food security, communities aspirations would be met by empowering extension officers and community extension volunteers to disseminate new soil enriching techniques to farmers to support them improve their output at lower production cost.

   Vulnerability

Social Welfare

The Department of Social Welfare, which is charged with, the responsibility of handling issues related to the vulnerable and excluded segments of the society, is structured into three areas. These are: Justice and Administration, Community Care and Child Rights and protection. To do its work effectively, the department in the West Mamprusi District undertook a registration of the various categories of persons with disabilities. A total of 257 persons have so far been registered. The details are as indicated in the table below.

The causes of these disabilities were revealed as: congenital factors, diseases, accidents and injuries. Others were poor living and working conditions and old age.

The Community Based Rehabilitation Programme

This was introduced in 1994 to help see to the needs of the growing disabled population in the District. The programme aims at empowering the communities to take care of the disabled within the communities they hail. The programme was piloted in four communities. These were Wungu, Tinguri, Wulugu and Loagri/Kunkwa. 308 persons benefited from the pilot programme.

In the year 2001, an NGO called Action On Disability and Development entered the District and have organised a series of workshops intended to build the capacity of disabled persons to handle their own destiny. The organisation introduced a credit scheme for the disabled in the district. This was intended to be a revolving fund to be disbursed among the disabled association in the West Mamprusi District.