Campaign against hunger vital

The Ghana unit of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) last week launched an international campaign against hunger in Ghana. Dubbed: “The one billion hungry campaign,” the programme highlighted the growing problem of global hunger, which affects more than one billion people worldwide.
The aim of the programme, according to the organizers, was to act as a reminder to world leaders to eliminate global hunger and deliver the L’ Aquila statement on food security by scaling up investments in agriculture and further addressing the root causes of hunger and poverty, which are hampering the growth of particularly developing nations.
Mr. Musa Saihou Mbenga, the deputy regional representative of FAO Africa, in his address divulged that over a quarter of a billion people in Africa currently suffered from malnutrition with the Central and Eastern Africans being the worst hit areas.
It is against this backdrop that we on the Today newspaper will like to urge the President Mills led-government to step up efforts in addressing the issue of poverty and its attendant effects in the country, especially in the three Northern Regions.
It is estimated that more than 70 per cent of Ghanaians living in the northern parts of the country hardly get three-square meals on their tables everyday, depicting the enormity of the problem.
And jostling for the shameful fourth place on the poverty ladder in the country are the Central Region and Volta Region. In these regions, it is believed that a significant number of people resident there are wallowing in abject poverty with many children involved in child labour as a result of their parents’ inability to fend for them.
The paper however believes that the country has the wherewithal to address the poverty situation that most of our citizens are engulfed in. Though we always tend to blame past leaders for the continent’s economic challenges, it is imperative that Africans come together to fight poverty.
It is in this wise that the paper urges the Mills administration to do a lot more in eradicating poverty in the country. So far as Today is concerned, the current NDC government has not committed enough resources to reducing poverty.
Whilst urging the Mills government to do more, we also encourage the private sector to invest in poverty-stricken regions such as the three northern parts in the country. And what can largely motivate such investments is government’s provision of good infrastructural facilities.
We therefore hope that the NDC government will set out pragmatic policies that will transform the social and economic lives of many poor Ghanaians. The NDC government must be proactively seen to be fighting poverty not preaching it.