After taking a break to resolve some problems confronting the exercise, the Ghana National Household Registry (GNHR) has resumed work in the Upper West region.
The exercise which is aimed at getting data on the number of households in the country was initiated by the Ministry of Gender and Social Protection in August 2016.
Touring the Upper West region on Friday, the national coordinator of the exercise Robert Austin disclosed that, some problems bedeviled the exercise when it was started and this forced the GNHR to pause in order to resolve them.
He said,”When we started we realized some problems with the exercise. These problems had to do with the software which was being used and the battery life of the device used to capture the data we need. So we decided to pause to resolve these problems and am glad we did because we have resolved those problems.”
He added “though the break has put a strain on our timelines, we are now working faster than when we started because the software has been worked on and the enumerators are now comfortable using it.
“We have now registered about 50,000 more in addition to the 30,000 we registered prior to our taking a break. So now we have registered about 80,000 households in the upper west region”.
The National Coordinator further disclosed that most of their work is now going to be concentrated in the urban areas since they have done those in the rural areas.
According to Mr. Austin,”we have finished with work at the peripheral of the region and we are now moving to the urban area. Our challenge, however, is that we are unable to track people in the urban centers due to their work schedules. We have therefore revised our approach to doing early morning registration and late evening registration”.
On the importance of the exercise, Mr. Austin disclosed that it would help government and other organizations measure the impact of social intervention programs in the country.
He said, “if you look at the social intervention programs we have in the country, it is difficult to measure the impact. So when this is done we can measure the real impact of these programs”.
He added that, “it would also ensure that the intervention get to those it’s intended for as the data captured will indicate how poor the registrants are”.
The Ghana National Household Registry is expected to conclude work in the upper west region by 15th November,2016 and data captured will be available for use by January 2017.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM/Musah Lansah
