ghananlpcommunity/ghana-gov-speeches-sentences huggingface dataset:
Accordingly, we will fulfil our campaign manifesto promise by removing the guarantor requirement that makes it difficult for most students to apply for loans through the Student Loan Trust Fund programme.
As part of our commitment to the advancement of STEM, Government will continue with the development of twenty (20) STEM centres and eight (8) model Science Senior High schools across the country.
These institutions will be fitted with state-of-the art equipment and laboratories, which will facilitate teaching and learning in all areas, including artificial intelligence and robotics.
Speaker, I want to thank this august House for passing the Education Regulatory Bodies’ Act, 2020 (Act 1023).
The passage of this Act has established the Commission for Technical Vocational Education and Training (CTVET) and the TVET Service.
All these will help to streamline delivery of TVET, and avoid overlaps and duplication.
We are also building thirty-two (32) TVET institutions across the country to augment existing infrastructure for effective TVET delivery.
In line with our commitment to address the issue of youth unemployment through TVET, Government will commence the implementation of the Ghana Jobs and Skills project this year.
This project seeks to expedite the development of competency-based training curricula on the National TVET Qualification Framework for one hundred (100) trades/professions from level one (1) (National Proficiency 1) to level five (5) (Higher National Diploma) as well as training some twenty-five thousand (25,000) beneficiaries and provide entrepreneurial support to about fifty thousand (50,000) individuals.
It will also seek to implement the Ghana Labour Market Information System, and upgrade of district public employment centres and services.
A key objective of our effort to improve quality education and ensure that our students become globally competitive is to maintain the integrity of our examinations and assessment.
In connection with this, Government, working through WAEC, will introduce new measures to curb examination leakages and malpractices.
I acknowledge that the teacher is at the centre of every reform in the field of education.
Prioritising the welfare of teachers remains a key objective of Government.
After the restoration of teacher training allowances, Government is now paying professional allowances to both teaching and non-teaching staff.
I am happy to announce that Government is facilitating the acquisition of two hundred and eighty thousand laptops for members of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) and the Coalition of Concern Teachers (CCT) this year.
Moving forward, the Minister for Education will soon detail an action plan for the implementation of the National Teacher Policy.
Government has also introduced several interventions at the high school level.
Some of these are the one hundred and ninety-eight million cedi (GH¢198 million) academic intervention support programme dedicated for extra classes for students in SHS, implementation of free internet connectivity for secondary schools, full absorption of BECE registration fee for all for students in public junior high school from 2017 till date, and full absorption of WASSCE registration fees for students, which started last year.
Speaker, our effort at digitisation is gathering steam.
When my government assumed office in 2017, we faced the challenge of a largely informal economy.
The features of the informal economy included the absence of unique identification for citizens and residents of Ghana, and the absence of a working property address system across the country.
Further, only a small proportion of our population was registered by the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) with Tax Identification Numbers (TINs), and by SSNIT for social security.
Seventy percent (70%) of the adult population did not have access to a bank account, financial transactions were dominated by cash, and the processes of service delivery in most MMDAs were largely manual and highly bureaucratic.
It was in this context that we set about the process of formalizing our informal economy through digitisation.
Speaker, after four years in office, I am happy to state that there has been more progress in formalising the Ghanaian economy than there was in the previous sixty (60) years since independence.
Speaker, for the first time, we have enrolled 15.5 million people onto the National ID card system (the Ghanacard), and we will complete the process this year.
From 1 st April, and this is not an April Fool’s prank, all National ID numbers will become Tax Identification Numbers.
In so doing, the number of people registered by GRA for tax purposes will increase from the current three million (3 million) to 15.5 million.
I should recall that at the end of 2016, only 750,000 people had TIN numbers.
The increase to 15.5 million in just four years is simply phenomenal.
Similarly, from the 2 nd quarter of this year, all National ID numbers will also become SSNIT numbers.
This will increase the number of people on the SSNIT database from four million (4 million) to 15.5 million, making it easier for new contributors to be enlisted on the scheme.
The National ID numbers will also become NHIS numbers.
Very soon, we will link the National ID to all SIM cards, bank accounts, Births and Deaths Registry, DVLA documents, and passports.
Speaker, for the first time, through the implementation of the Digital Property Addressing System, every location in Ghana has a digital address.
The process of affixing unique property address plates for some 7.5 million properties in all sixteen (16) regions has also started.
Speaker, for the first time in Ghana, more than seventy percent (70%) of the population has access to financial services either through a bank account or a mobile money account.
We have been able to do so through the implementation of mobile money interoperability (between bank accounts and mobile wallets), with Ghana as the first and only country in Africa to have done so.
It is, therefore, not surprising that Ghana is the fastest growing mobile money market in Africa.
Furthermore, our successful introduction of the Universal QR (Quick Response) CODE for payments across banks, telcos, fintechs and merchants will propel Ghana to be amongst the first countries in Africa (if not the first) to move towards a largely cashless economy, when fully rolled out across the country with the support of the Bank of Ghana.
Speaker, we have also digitised the operations of many government institutions including the ports, NHIS, DVLA, GRA, and the Passport Office.
One of the most dramatic examples of this development has been the ability of SSNIT to pay pensions within ten (10) days of application, as opposed to the endless delays of the past.
To make it easy to obtain government services, a portal, Ghana.Gov, has been established where all MMDAs are being onboarded.
It is a one stop shop where anyone can apply for and pay for a government service.
We expect to complete the onboarding of all MMDAs this year, and, in so doing, significantly enhance the efficiency and reduce the cost of delivery of government services to our people.
The Integrated Customs Management Systems (ICUMS), which is an end-to-end customs management system at the Ports to enhance management and collection of customs duties, has, despite initial resistance and controversy, succeeded in eliminating the multiple routes prior to payment of duties, ensuring seamless processes, increasing revenues, and speedy processing of pre-manifest declaration and valuation on the same system.
We have also integrated the Ghana.gov platform and the Integrated Tax Application Preparation Systems (ITaPs), which allow taxpayers to make payments at their convenience online and through taxpayers’ banks, and the use of mobile money, credit cards and debit cards.
Speaker, it is clear that we have made significant strides in formalising the economy, and we will do even more going forward.
Speaker, our judicial system has not been left out of the digitisation programme.
Today, the e-Justice and e-Case register initiatives, for example, are helping to ensure that the law keeps pace with technology, ending the age-old “missing dockets” phenomenon and endless litigations, which have plagued the efficient delivery of justice in the country for many, many years.
Government, through the Ministry of Local Government and the District Assembly Common Fund, has commenced, in an unprecedented initiative, the construction of ninety (90) Courts with accompanying accommodation for judges across the country, to help address the problem of inadequate court infrastructure.
These structures are at advanced stages of completion.
Again, through the same medium, twenty (20) townhouses and a guesthouse are being built to be used as permanent residences for Court of Appeal Judges based in Kumasi, who are mandated to handle cases in the northern part of the country.
With the coming into force of the Courts Regulation 2020, LI 2429, on 16 th December 2020, the relevant sections of the Courts Act (Act 459) have been amended, and has led to an expansion of the jurisdiction of the Lower Courts.
Indeed, prior to the amendment, the monetary values of cases that could be heard by the District and Circuit Courts were twenty thousand (GH¢20,000) and fifty thousand cedis (GH¢50,000) respectively.
Today, the District Court’s jurisdiction over cases brought before it has been increased to five hundred thousand cedis (GH¢500,000), whereas that of the Circuit Court has been increased to two million cedis (GH¢2 million).
Speaker, this increase in jurisdiction will ensure that more cases are heard in the District and Circuit Courts, thus easing the burden on the High Courts.
All these measures will go a long way to enhance justice delivery in the country, and help consolidate the rule of law.
Speaker, when I appeared before this House on 4 th January 2021, to deliver the last Message on the State of the Nation at the dissolution of Parliament, I called for a national discourse on the long-standing issue of illegal small-scale mining in our country.
Yes, in the last four years so much has been achieved in cleaning up this industry, training miners in the best methods of mining, introducing community mining, enacting additional regulatory legislation, but the reality is that illegal small-scale mining remains a major problem.
I am confident that the new, energetic Minister for Lands and Natural Resources and Member of Parliament for Damongo Constituency, Hon.
Samuel Abu Jinapor, will rapidly facilitate the holding of this national dialogue, and will work to build on the progress of his predecessors by enhancing regulation of this sector, which should be anchored on the protection of the environment and on community mining.
Speaker, let me, at this point, assure the House that, in the course of this session of Parliament, Government will come back to engage the House on the steps it intends to take on the future of the Agyapa transaction.
Speaker, land administration continues to be bedevilled with, apparently, intractable challenges.
This year, government intends to roll out a programme for the digitisation of all land records for purposes of ensuring effective land administration.
Aggressive afforestation will be pursued in the course of the year, with the expected launch of a Green Ghana Project, which will see the mobilisation of Ghanaians in all fields of endeavour to participate in a nationwide tree planting exercise.
Speaker, in 2018, Ghana won the bid to host and organise the 2023 African Games for the first time since the tournament started in 1965.
A nine (9) member Local Organizing Committee has been constituted and inaugurated to handle the technical and events aspects of the 2023 Africa Games.
Government intends to provide maximum support to the LOC to help ensure we organise and host successful games.
The construction of ten (10) Youth Resource Centres (YRC) across the country which are at different levels of completion of between eighty-five percent (85%) and ninety-five percent (95%).
We are, as well, renovating and rehabilitating many other abandoned sports facilities.
We are paying allowances to about one thousand (1000) athletes through the Youth Employment Agency.
The Ghana Premier League has started, and hopefully, when we return to normalcy, capping of spectators at the stadiums will be a thing of the past.
This is a proper occasion for me, once again, on behalf of all Ghanaians, to congratulate the Black Satellites on their splendid victory in winning the nation’s 4 th Under-20 African Nations trophy, when they defeated Uganda by two goals to zero, on Sunday, in Nouakchott, capital of the Republic of Mauritania.
Ayekoo to the Black Satellites and to the technical and management teams.
I look forward to receiving them at Jubilee House later this afternoon.
Hopefully, this should be the beginning of a new era of success for Ghanaian football.
Speaker, the creation of the six (6) new regions led to the establishment of six (6) new regional houses of chiefs.
In my tour of the country last year, I inaugurated these new Houses, and cut the sod for the construction of six (6) new buildings for them, which are ongoing.
Government, through the Ministry of Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs, will continue to engage our traditional and religious rulers in matters of our common interest, such as the protection and preservation of the environment.
Government is also determined to provide the funding necessary for the Judicial Committees of the various Houses of Chiefs to be able to do their work effectively and efficiently, so as to bring closure to many longstanding chieftaincy disputes.
Speaker, our nation continues to benefit from the “Year of Return.”
Since then, we have intensified our engagement with Africans in the diaspora and all persons of African descent more positively in areas such as trade and investment co-operation, and skills and knowledge development, in what we call “Beyond the Return”.
The Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, together with its implementing agency, the Ghana Tourism Authority, is working towards the realisation of this initiative, which will bring even greater spotlight on our nation Ghana.
A lot of work has been undertaken in revamping our tourist sites, and making them attractive.
Digital revenue collection systems have been installed at the Elmina and Cape Coast Castles, Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park and Wli Waterfalls.
Government has upgraded five (5) tourism sites to meet international standards for increased visitation, and create jobs and incomes for the people.
The new Minister for the sector, the industrious Ibrahim Awal Mohammed, has also indicated his determination to strengthen the Creative Arts industry in Ghana.
Already, the first-ever Creative Arts Senior High School, located in Kwadaso in the Ashanti Region, is nearing completion; the governing board of the National Film Authority is in place; and even greater attention will be paid to this sector by Government.
Speaker, our quest to ensure an improved sanitation system across the country was bolstered last year by the commencement of construction of sixteen (16) integrated recycling and solid waste processing facilities.
It is expected that all sixteen (16) facilities will be completed before the end of the year.
The Sustainable Rural Water and Sanitation Project and the Water Supply Improvement Project of the Ghana-Spain Debt Swap Development Programme have been completed.
In September 2020, I joined the people of Amedzofe, Ziope, Akpokope/Batume Junction, Matse, Dzolo Gbogame, and surrounding communities to commission the five (5) Piped Water Supply Systems under the Project.
Concrete preparatory works have also commenced on a number of water supply projects across the country, including the Wenchi Water Supply Project, Keta Water Supply Project, Five Districts Water Supply Scheme Phase 3, Tamale Water Supply Project, Damongo Water Supply Project, and Yendi Water Supply Project.
Our efforts at ending open defaecation received a boost with the construction of one hundred and three thousand, one hundred and forty-nine (103,149) toilet facilities for vulnerable households in towns and villages across the country, under the Household and Institutional Toilet Programme.
The cumulative result of this has been that some eight hundred and twenty-two thousand (822,000) persons have benefitted nationwide.
Some five thousand, five hundred communities have also been declared open defaecation free.
Speaker, in the energy sector, the National Energy Policy, 2020, has been completed to improve the framework and strategies to meet contemporary energy needs of the country.
The government has improved the financial sustainability of the energy sector through several interventions, including paying up the energy legacy debts.
Furthermore, negotiations with Independent Power Producers, the terms of whose contracts entail substantial financial charges on the state, are ongoing, and should be completed by the end of the year.
This should result in a more affordable cost of power for the Ghanaian people.
Under the National Electrification Scheme, a total of one thousand, four hundred and thirty-six (1,436) communities have been connected to the national grid, which has increased the national electricity access rate to 85.17% as at October 2020.
My ambition is that, by the end of my term, the figure will be one hundred percent (100%).
The Ghana National Petroleum Corporation has accelerated petroleum exploration activities in the inland Voltaian Basin.
It has successfully acquired and processed two thousand, five hundred and thirty-eight (2,538) line kilometre of 2D seismic data, analysed one thousand, five hundred and thirty-seven (1,537) geochemical samples, and established a working petroleum system.
A gas processing plant-train is being constructed in the Western Region to compliment the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant, so as to increase dry gas delivery for power and non-power users.
The Takoradi portion of the Takoradi-Tema Interconnection Project (TTIP) has been completed with an increased capacity of gas exports from Takoradi to Tema, through the West African Gas Pipeline.
GNPC and its private sector partners partners have advanced the work on the Tema LNG project, Ssub-Saharan Africa’s first LNG regasification terminal, which is expected to come on stream in the course of the year, to improve gas supply reliability for power and non-power industrial applications.
The facility will also become a hub for regional energy security, ensuring low cost fuel for both Ghana and her partners in the ECOWAS Region.
Speaker, at the beginning of my first term of office, in 2017, Government outlined its social development goals to include the promotion of gender equity and equality, survival and development of children, as well as the harmonisation of social protection interventions and programmes to contribute to the development of our nation.
I am pleased to inform the House that, in the course of this session of Parliament, the new Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Hon.
Sarah Adwoa Safo, MP for Dome Kwabenya, will resubmit to the House the Affirmative Action Bill.
Our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters are looking up to us on this.
Indeed, it will make our society the richer, and I am appealing to the House, on both sides, to make one big effort to ensure its enactment.
The Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) Programme has increased the number of pay points from seven thousand two hundred (7,200) to fourteen thousand, three hundred (14,300) in order to make it easy for beneficiaries to access their grants.
In all, a total of three hundred and thirty-four thousand, four hundred and thirty-eight (334,438) households benefitted from the Programme.
The Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) currently feeds over three million, three hundred thousand (3.3 million) beneficiary pupils, in some nine thousand (9,000) kindergarten and primary schools, with one hot nutritious meal every day per child.
Speaker, our commitment to the development of inner cities and zongo communities is unwavering.
Projects such as the construction of classroom blocks, astro-turfs, establishment of ICT centres, installation of streetlights, entrepreneurial and vocational skills training, supporting needy students, and the rehabilitation of access roads and drains, have been undertaken.
Another key policy initiative has been the re-introduction of the Arabic Instructors Programme.
The Zongo Coders Programme and Starhub Programme are initiatives meant to redirect the energies of young men and women of Zongo communities into productive ICT ventures.
So far, several hundred young men and women have been trained under these programmes.
Speaker, activities of the then Ministry of Special Development Initiatives (MSDI), like those of the Inner City and Zongo Ministry, have been brought under the ambit of the Presidency.
The record of work undertaken in the Ministry was remarkable – five hundred and sixty-eight (568) units of ten-seater community water closets, forty-two (42) warehouses, four hundred and twenty-seven (427) dams, forty (40) rural markets, twenty (20) fully equipped community clinics, three hundred and seven (307) fully equipped ambulances.
Speaker, in the area of coastal management, we continue to improve the resilience of the country’s coastline against tidal wave erosion that poses a significant threat to lives, livelihoods and properties of the people living along the coastline.
Consequently, we have implemented a number of coastal protection works at Aboadze, Nkontompo, Adjoa, Blekusu, Elmina, Dansoman, Amanful Kumah, Dixcove, Axim, Cape Coast, Komenda, Anomabu and Ningo-Prampram, which protect, in all, a total stretch of fifty four (54) kilometres, and are at various stages of completion.
Government has also implemented the annual National Flood Control Programme (NFCP), with the overall goal of reducing the incidence of flooding across the country.
The construction of the Multipurpose Pwalugu Dam project is aimed at mitigating the regular floods that occur in the White Volta basin, covering parts of the Upper East and North East Regions.
Preparatory activities started in 2020 and will be completed by the first half of this year, with actual construction commencing in the second half of this year.
Commissioning is expected in 2025.
It is the single largest investment in the northern part of Ghana made by any government.
Once completed, it will add sixty megawatts (60MW) of hydropower and fifty megawatts (50MW) of solar power to the national grid, thereby improving the quality of power supply in the northern part of Ghana.
The 25,000-hectare irrigation scheme will be bigger than the total size of all irrigated projects implemented in the country since independence, and will boost food production in the northern part of Ghana, thereby boosting economic development in northern Ghana and creating jobs for the youth.
Speaker, another important infrastructural development is the construction of the Boankra Inland Port, which will transform totally inland trade, and ease the movement of goods and services, especially for traders as well as our land-locked neighbours.
The Korean contractors are due to start work any moment from now.
Under housing, the Government of Ghana Affordable Housing Programme, which seeks to increase access to safe, secure, adequate and affordable housing units across the country, is continuing in earnest.
Thus far, one thousand, four hundred and sixty-four housing units in Borteyman, one thousand, and twenty-seven (1,027) in Asokore Mampong, and three hundred and twelve (312) housing projects have been completed in Kpone.
The Koforidua, Tamale and Wa Housing Projects have been handed over to the State Housing Company Ltd for completion.
Speaker, it is my intention to place special emphasis on resolving the problems of the housing sector in the country, because tackling the housing deficit is long overdue.
Speaker, one of the ministries created in my first term as President was the Ministry of Railways Development, and the benefits of its creation are showing.