MORE SCHOOLS NEEDED IN GA MASHIE, OLD FADAMA AREAS (PAGE 14)

ONE hundred thousand children of school age in the Ga Mashie and Old Fadama catchment areas are out of school as a result of lack of space in those communities to construct new first-cycle schools.
The Ga Mashie Development Agency (GAMADA) is, therefore, scouting for 80 acres of land in the two communities to construct new schools to enable them to enrol the backlog of children currently languishing in the area without education.
The Director of GAMADA, Nii Teiko Tagoe, brought this to light at the launch of a population training and research capacity for development projects on health for Ga Mashie and Old Fadama, popularly known as Sodom and Gomorrah.
He expressed the hope that the launch of the population project would assist to unearth the factors underlying poverty in those two communities.
He said the major livelihood of the area, fishing, had also collapsed but added that hope for its revival had come with the recent ceremony at which President John Agyekum Kufuor cut the sod for the construction of a fishing harbour at James Town.
He said until recently the area had been neglected in terms of poverty alleviation projects because it was hard to believe that some urban areas such as Ga Mashie, which was close to the central business district of Accra, could be vulnerable.
A recent study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), he said, had brought to light the plight of the urban poor in the area.
Nii Teiko said since then the area had witnessed a number of development projects, such as the rehabilitation of some historical buildings which provided some job opportunities for artisans in the area.
Professor Nii Amoo Dodoo, the Director of the Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) at the University of Ghana Legon, which undertook the population research, in collaboration with the University of Southampton, said the project would focus on children and mothers to find out the relationship between urban poverty and health.
He said because researchers usually used averages in comparing rural poverty with urban poverty, there was always the misconception that rural poverty was more debilitating than urban poverty.
He said studies done in some African countries had revealed that urban poverty in some cities could be more dire than in the rural areas and that the studies at the two areas depicted that.
He said the three-year research, when completed, would help guide policy makers and non-governmental agencies on where to channel their poverty alleviation interventions.
Prof Dodoo said the field research could help inform the development agenda of the country, as well as assist in the redesigning of the social science curricula.
He said universities such as the University of Cape Coast, the University of Ibadan and Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone were partners in the research.
The Ngleshie Mantse, Nii Kojo Ababio V, who chaired the launch, appealed to the communities to participate in the research since they held the key to its success.