The Executive Director of the National Population Council, Leticia Adelaide Appiah is advocating for the government to use incentives to encourage Ghanaians to use\u00a0family planning methods\u00a0as a way of controlling the country\u2019s fast-growing population.<\/p>\n
According to her, the population growth rate if not checked would reduce the quality of human resource in the country and stagnate economic development.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”XQ5i9p8Sm3iu0zxS6HAdPNkRZKfwbLEq”]Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show<\/strong> on Monday, Dr. Appiah said despite the importance of population growth, it must be regulated to correspond with economic development.<\/p>\n \u201cPopulation growth is good, but it should be regulated so that it does not outstrip economic development,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The 2016 Population and Housing Census pegged Ghana\u2019s total population at 28.21\u00a0million.<\/p>\n China is among the few countries in the world who have adopted a major population control policy to restrict childbirth.<\/p>\n In 1979,\u00a0the country started the \u201cone child per family policy\u201d (Juali Li 563) which stated that citizens must obtain a birth certificate before the birth of their children.<\/p>\n A state government in India has instituted a policy to offer newlyweds a cash grant of 5000 rupees or $106 to wait two years to have their first child. Other states have also made having more than two children a disqualification from holding public office.<\/p>\n But Dr. Leticia Appiah said Ghana must not necessarily place a cap on the number of children couples are allowed to produce but reward those who take up family planning initiatives such as spacing and delaying childbirth.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the person wants it [a child] you cannot deprive them\u2026Our problem is population growth, why don\u2019t we incentivize family planning uptake?\u201d she quizzed.<\/p>\n She called on the government to make family planning services more accessible to encourage its patronage.<\/p>\n Dr. Appiah further noted that government could consider placing a cap limit on the number of children per family to benefit from some of its\u00a0social intervention programs to encourage family planning.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Jonas Nyabor\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Executive Director of the National Population Council, Leticia Adelaide Appiah is advocating for the government to use incentives to encourage Ghanaians to use\u00a0family planning methods\u00a0as a way of controlling the country\u2019s fast-growing population. According to her, the population growth rate if not checked would reduce the quality of human resource in the country and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[10364,3,10365],"class_list":["post-346626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-slider-1","category-top-stories","tag-child-policy","tag-ghana-news","tag-population-control"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=346626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=346626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=346626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=346626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}