The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has expressed worry about government failure to ensure petroleum expenditure in Ghana is gender-sensitive.
According to ACEP, there is a continue gender inequalities within the agricultural, education, and health sectors in the country.
The Energy Policy organization made this known at a stakeholders dialogue aimed at sharing a research findings & recommendation.
The organization on Monday March 13, 2023, held a forum with stakeholders working with community-based gender-focused organizations to highlight issues affecting women in agriculture, health and the education sectors, and the need for petroleum revenue expenditure through Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) investments to reflect on these issues.
The Policy Analyst of ACEP, Mr. Eliasu Ali in his research finding presentation said, about 14 percent of death cases among women are maternity health related, adding 20 percent of girls are less likely to attain a high school education than boys.
He said women continue to dominate in the agriculture sector characterized by lower financial returns.
“ACEP and patners believe that, oil revenues through the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA), present unique opportunities to address some of these peculiar barriers, actualise our petroleum law, the petroleum revenue management act, among the areas of government expenditure.
One of the areas should be social inclusion and the protection of weak and vulnerable, as the distich priority areas however, our analysis for the past ten years, indicate that, there has been a single year where these problematic areas has been prioritize”, he stated.
Mr. Eliasu Ali further explained that, “basically, the conversation we are having this morning centers around the use of our petroleum revenues. Petroleum resources have generated revenue over the past ten plus years and as an organization at the Africa Centre for Energy Policy, we believe that in line with the provisions of our petroleum laws; the petroleum management act which dictate that petroleum revenues should be used in an equitable to benefit everybody in one of the top priority areas – which is social inclusion and the protection of the weak and vulnerable”.
“We did a study to analyze over the years the trend of ABFA allocation in project implementation to see whether they are equitable in terms of gender equality, to see whether the disproportionate needs of women especially in the agriculture, health and education sectors are being met through the budgetary allocation as well as the project implementation”, he added.
Story By: Alhassan Yakubu |www.diamondfmonline.com |Ghana.
