Kumasi — A two-day workshop on Urban Poverty Reduction Project, organized by the Social Investment Fund (SIF) and sponsored by GTZ, a Germany-based company, has been held in Kumasi under the theme: "Pro Poor Urban Poverty".

It is aimed at contributing to Ghana's efforts at achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by creating jobs, improving livelihoods in Urban and Peril-Urban zones, as well as improving social-economic growth settlements through better participatory management.

The workshop was also aimed at facilitating access to income generating activities through capacity building and strengthening urban small scale enterprise sector. Its objective is to strengthen poor strategic urban development planning at the local levels.

In his remarks, Mr. Kwabena Otchere, Director, Planning Formulation Unit of the National Development Planning Commission (MDPC) noted that planning our cities must take centre stage because it thrives under decentralization, where decisions are taken.

According to him, both development and physical planning needs to be looked into since urban poverty are from poor town planning, pointing out that "our institutional framework is not the best and so has to address the problem of physical planning".

He indicated that there must be something wrong somewhere if people leave the rural areas to the big cities to seek for greener pastures because every district has some resources for developmental projects to make its indigenes feel like they where in the big cities.

Nana Ama Serwaah Dapaah, the Executive Director of SIF, stated that poor planning has brought about poverty in the cities, adding that "it has brought about many slumps". She therefore entreated all to participate in planning since its starts from the communities.