Editorial Monday, 19th September 2022.
The Executive Director of the National Population Council, Dr Leticia Appiah has called on all stakeholders both national and international to treat population dynamics as a national priority. She has said that developed countries are developed because they prioritized population issues alongside infrastructural development.
To that end, if we seek accelerated socio-economic development we have to prioritize population issues alongside infrastructural development.
Speaking to the Daily Searchlight’s Nana Poku in her office, she postulated that if the country does not come to recognize population issues as being of national priority, our quest to national development would be inefficient, long and tedious. Research and best practices abounds to support this, she said.
According to her, the country as a whole and individuals stand to benefit if all stakeholders recognize the enormous power of population management in our lives.
She therefore called on policy advisers, makers, implementers and implementers to improve population education and services across the length and breadth of the country to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities.
The Daily Searchlight believes greatly in the opinion expressed by Dr Leticia Appiah. We believe that her point is at the basis of the nation’s inabilities to meet its development aspirations, because it is only by knowing population numbers and trends, and factoring these factors into planning, that we can hope to meet the aspirations of the generality of the population.
That being the case, we believe that the various planning units within various governmental systems and agencies should be given the necessary support and recognition in the formulation of policy.
The policy cannot be responsive, where it fails to factor in the issue of the target of the policy. That being the case, we believe that Dr. Leticia Appiah’s suggestion is fundamental, and should be given very serious recognition.
(This article was first published in the column EDITORIAL of the Daily Searchlight of Monday, 19th September 2022. The Daily Searchlight appears on the newsstands of Ghana every working day and PDF versions are available for sale online twenty-four hours a day all day throughout the world on www.ghananewsstand.com).
