Dr Prosper Laari, the GHHR National Coordinator, stated at a press briefing in Accra that the exercise was part of measures by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection to update its data on the poor and vulnerable in Accra.

Dr Laari indicated that the current pandemic had rendered many people vulnerable.

That, he noted, called for the need to upgrade data on the vulnerable groups to reflect the present status of the target beneficiaries for social protection programmes in the country.

"An updated data will help government to adequately and rapidly plan and budget towards the social welfare services to provide for vulnerable groups during emergency situations and beyond," he said.

Dr Laari said GNHR would adopt the census approach with enumerators who would visit various households and use a well-structured data intake questionnaire to collect socio-economic data on members.

He explained that the Registry would afterwards categorise the households and individuals into poor and non-poor, after which social interventions could use their own eligibility criteria to determine the beneficiaries to include in their programmes.  

Dr Laari further explained that the Gender Ministry would continue to provide the field staff with needed Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and regularly brief them on the need to observe social distancing protocols so as not to put themselves and the respondents at risk of contracting the COVID-19.

The GNHR data collection exercise is being sponsored by the World Bank and Department of International Development, United Kingdom.

Since its establishment, the GNHR has successfully completed data collection in the Upper West and Upper East regions, which were among the poorest regions in the country.

Dr Laari said the two regions presently had comprehensive data on the poor and vulnerable, which could be used to identify beneficiaries for social protection interventions, and to provide relief services during an emergency like the current COVID-19 pandemic.

He said similar exercises would be carried out in the Northern, North East, Savannah, Central and Volta regions by the end of December 2020.

The National Household Registry is a Unit under the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection with the mandate to compile a register of the poor and vulnerable for social protection programmes.