Disclosing that for the second phase the Bank approved $51m with the project to be implemented within five years period. The aim is to reduce poverty and attain sustainable improvement in well-being of the population in Sierra Leone.
He stated that the Objectives of the ‘gietrenk’ program is to promote access to socio-economic opportunities and services for rural poor communities and to build capacity and skills of communities and local institutions.”
The NaCSA Chief maintained that the project will be implemented in four Districts, Moyamba, Kenema, Port Loko and Tonkolili districts in seven chiefdoms and it will take a rural growth pole approach, adding that this is to transform the chiefdom into an economic Hub for Growth and the spill-over effects impacts on neighboring chiefdoms.
Speaking about the criteria for Selection of Target Chiefdoms, Commissioner Alie Badara Mansaray said the selection is based on chiefdoms which are to serve as Hubs under the Growth Pole and it was done by policy level and technical stakeholders from the relevant Ministries Department and Agencies including representatives of local councils, ministries, Statistics Sierra Leone and NaCSA.
He said the Chiefdoms were selected based on food vulnerability criteria levels, higher population, having a minimum base in terms of provision of social services, being closer to the headquarter chiefdom thus having the potential to serve as a growth centre; is not a district headquarter chiefdom; possess the potential for enhancing agricultural production and can have spillover effects to most food insecure chiefdoms and does not have mineral extraction.
Commissioner Alie Badara Mansaray further explained other projects that NACSA has undertaken since its establishment, pro-poor growth for peace consolidation, social protection secretariat and the Sierra Leone social safety nets which was established with the key building blocks for a basic National Safety Nets System that provide income support to extremely poor households in the country.