A Policy research and advocacy NGO is criticizing the reduction in the allocation to the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection in the 2018 budget.
SENG Ghana has observed expenditure allocation to the Ministry in the 2018 Budget was GH¢ 61,380,673, a decrease in real terms of approximately 77 percent compared to its 2017 allocation of GH¢ 255,481,323.
This reduces the Ministry’s share of total Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) Budget to 0.2 percent from one percent in 2017, which may affect operations of key institutions under the Ministry, it said.
It said allocation for Goods and Services dropped by half from 82 percent in 2017 to 40 percent in 2018, while compensation increased significantly from nine percent in 2017 to 44 percent in 2018.
Director of Policy Advocacy Programme of SENG Ghana, Clara Osei-Boateng said this at the Organisation’s media encounter on the 2018 Post Budget Analysis in Accra on Wednesday.
She said, for instance, that the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, which was supposed to investigate human rights abuses and corruption issues, may not get sufficient funds to carry out its investigations into human rights abuses and corruption cases.
Madam Osei-Boateng noted that the Social Welfare Department, which falls under the Ministry, did not have vehicles and other logistics to investigate cases of child abuses and domestic violence and, therefore, asked government to explain the rationale behind the budget reductions.
The media briefing aims at explaining the budget to the public, identify policy gaps and assess whether the budget addressed citizens’ needs and priorities as well as make inputs to help address the aspirations of Ghanaians, especially the vulnerable people in society.
The NGO analysed key thematic areas in the budget such as social services, agriculture, health, financial allocations to goods and services, education, water, sanitation and hygiene, social and children protection
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