Vulnerability

Many factors interact to render some people vulnerable in the Municipal. The following are some of the factors:

• Lack of skill-training for the poor.
• Use of outmoded methods of farming.
• Inability to access health facilities due to poverty.
• Inability to pay children’s school fees.
• Lack of funds to expand businesses due to inability to access credit.
• Inadequate potable water.
• Poor diet and dilapidated houses.

Large portions of the Afram Plains area of the Municipal are covered with grassland.  In the harmattan period, bushfires are rampant due to improper handling of naked fire.  At such periods, farmlands are burnt, homes destroyed, lives and properties running into several millions of cedis are lost.  This episode renders the people more vulnerable. Children drop out of school to help their parents on their new farms. Revenue accruing from outflow of food from the area is thus lost.

Another area of concern is the rising incidence of HIV/AIDS menace.  The Municipal  has seen an increase in reports of people affected and infected by the disease.  The most prominent effect has been that on PLWHAs and Orphans rendering them very vulnerable.  So far, about 35 PLWHAs have been identified and are being supported by the Assembly and Amaniampong Developers Association, a local CBO, through Treatment Care and Support Programme.  The group has so far been trained in income generating activities (soap making, grasscutter rearing etc.).  They are also supported in the form of food supply.

Perhaps the biggest problem in this area has been the identification of the PLWHAs due to stigmatization.  A few orphans too have been identified and supported educationally through the supply of school uniforms, exercise books, and clothing. There is a high rate of youth unemployment in the Municipality . About sixty of the unemployed youth have been registered under the Community Based Rural Development Project (CBRDP) Learning Centre Programme, to be trained in various vocational skills by September 2006. 

Another group of 50 unemployed youth has been registered to be trained in refuse collection using Tricycles under a programme called Youth Job Corps Programme (Tricycle Concept) to be administered by ZOOMLION GHANA LIMITED, on behalf of the Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment.
Yet another group of 500 has been registered to be trained under the National Youth Employment Programme. 

So far, more than 20 persons with disability are receiving educational support at Akwapim School for the Blind and in other forms. Child Labour is not a common practice in the Municipality. However, it is not uncommon to see school children selling on the street after school hours, and during holidays and on market days.

A number of truck-pushers who are mostly of northern extraction are homeless and thus sleep in kiosks and on verandas in the night. Most of this group of people engages in all manner of vices including mobile phone snatching, petty stealing, armed robbery and dealing in drugs.  The National Youth Programme in the Municipality is putting in place the registration of this people and training them in gainful vocational skills. In the mean time the security agents in the Municipality are closely monitoring this group and dealing with them appropriately.