C'ttee set up to develop migration policy

Page 44: June 19, 2008.
Story: Albert K. Salia
AN Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee was inaugurated yesterday to help fashion out a national migration policy for Ghana to be factored into the national development agenda.
The committee is to identify various options for managing migration for the benefit of socio-economic development and poverty reduction that could be measured in objective, quantifiable manner and for which progress could be monitored.
The inauguration of the committee is in line with the government’s decision in 2006 to set up a Migration Bureau to co-ordinate the activities of various public sector institutions whose activities were affected by migration.
At the inauguration ceremony in Accra during which the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) presented office equipment worth GH¢15,000 to facilitate the setting up of the Bureau, the Minister of State at the Ministry of Interior, Nana Obiri Boahen, conceded that although migration cut across the various ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), all the institutions operated in isolation with no central co-ordinating body to harness their activities.
He said the setting up of the bureau was to bridge the gap to enable the country to harness the potential of migration for development.
He said the committee was to ensure that migration was mainstreamed into district and sector plans, and the development of a 10-year national management plan.
Nana Boahen said in Africa it was projected that one in 10 Africans would live and work outside their country of origin by 2015 if current trends continued.
He said although Ghana benefited extensively from remittances of Ghanaians in the Diaspora, the mass exodus of her trained professionals took a toll on national development.
He noted the dangerous journeys that the youth of Ghana undertook via the Sahara in search of greener pastures in Europe, something that needed to be checked by society.
Nana Boahen, therefore, charged the 12-member committee to work assiduously to make the vision of the government in mainstreaming migration on the development agenda a reality.
The Chief Director of the ministry, Mrs F. E. N. Ampratwum, urged the committee to put forward strategies and programmes that would enable the country to turn the brain drain to brain gain.
Representatives from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs; Finance and Economic Planning; Health; Justice and Attorney-General; Women and Children’s Affairs; Manpower, Youth and Employment; Tourism and Diasporan Relations; Education, Science and Sports; Trade and Industry, as well as the Centre for Migration Studies of the University of Ghana, Legon, make up the committee, which is to be chaired by the Minister of the Interior with the Executive Secretary of the bureau as another member.
The Head of Mission of the IOM in Ghana, Mr Davide Terzi, commended the government for taking the initiative to inaugurate the committee.
He noted that Ghana was one of the countries with high migration of its nationals to Western Europe.
He said the formulation of a migration policy would, therefore, go a long way to help the government benefit from migration.
Mr Terzi pledged the support of the IOM to the Ghanaian process to ensure its success.