Accra-Ghana, Nov. 15, GNA – The Domestic Violence Fund has been operationalised with an amount of GH¢1,500,000.00 in 2022.
This is in line with the implementation of the Domestic Violence 2007 (Act 732), Caretaker Minister, Mrs Cecilia Abena Dapaah, has said.
She said eight domestic violence response centres had been established to help facilitate services of survivors of sexual and gender-based violence.
Some 60 paralegals, made up of market executives and other stakeholders, had also been trained to respond to issues of sexual and gender-based violence.
Mrs Dapaah made this known at a two-day summit organised by the Ministry on Tuesday, in Accra.
The 2022 summit sought to present a platform for stakeholders and development partners to deliberate on how to attract funding to the sector to improve the lives of the vulnerable and adopt strategies for more cost-effective expenditures.
Mrs Dapaah said despite current challenges, the Ministry had worked tirelessly to roll out critical activities aimed at strengthening the policy and legal environment for gender equality, promoting and protecting the welfare of children, women, the aged, persons living with disability (PWD’s), and other vulnerable groups.
The Caretaker Minister said the theme for the summit was very timely due to the current economic turmoil being experienced all over the world.
She said: “Global economic activity is experiencing a broad-based and sharper-than-expected slowdown, cost-of-living crisis, and tightening financial conditions with inflation higher than seen in several decades in most countries.
“In Ghana, the economic situation has compelled the government to take stringent measures limiting resources available to our sector. This demands that we identify alternative sources of revenue to enable us to deliver on our mandate effectively and efficiently in the coming years, ” she said.
Dr. Afisa Zakariah, Chief Director, MoGCSP, said Ghana had made significant investments in key social protection and child protection programmes resulting in improvement in the lives of the less privileged, hence a critical attention was needed for effective resource mobilisation to support the poor.
“A critical area we need to give attention to for effective service delivery is resource mobilisation as countries that have recorded major successes in social service delivery had made substantial investments in the sector, ” she said.
She was hopeful that the summit would leverage efforts, generate ideas and strategies as well as input of stakeholder and partners to achieve resources for a more effective and efficient social service delivery.
Ms Francisca Oteng, Member of Parliament for Kwabre East, who is also the Chairperson, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Gender and Children, said the summit was necessary because it would give an insight to the activities of the Ministry, its challenges and the needed support it needed.
Madam Christabel Dadzie, a representative from the World Bank, said there was the need to use innovative ideas in the mobilisation of resources for the social protection sector.
She said the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic had put an extra burden across the global support chain, adding that social protection had become more important and called for innovative ideas in revenue mobilisation.
