Efforts at evicting street hawkers from the streets of Accra: the good and the bad

By operating in public spaces not authorized for trading activities, street hawkers offer various products for sale in order to eke out a living. However, the activity of street hawking finds itself at the wrong side of the laws governing the use of city-space. Several attempts by city authorities to evict hawkers operating at these unauthorized locations have yielded limited results. The number of street hawkers multiply day in and day out, even at locations previously not noted for hawking on the streets of Accra. This study sought to understand the motivation for the return of street hawkers amidst city authorities’ ban of street hawking and subsequent forceful eviction by city taskforce personnel. The study finds that hawkers have and will continue to resist eviction from the street as their own survival and that of an average of four (4) dependents solely rest on daily incomes made from hawking. The study also finds that the persistence of traffic congestion, the lack of effective policing of hawking spots, the minimal entry capital required to start hawking and the potential of obtaining substantial turnover over and above public sector wage will continue to fuel street hawking in Accra. The study recommends that an assessment and enforcement of the land use regulations as well an effective management of traffic flows in the city are likely to serve as a disincentive to hawking. Again street hawking is likely to be controlled if policies are directed at keeping children in school beyond junior high school level. Hawking in Accra is dominated by people who are not able to pursue academic study beyond senior high school and therefore have little employable skills. Suggestions are also made with regards to the reconciliation of data on street hawkers and their contributions to the economy both at the local and national level, in order to appreciate the demographic characteristics of city dwellers as well as their need to survive even as they strive to maintain modern cities and towns. Key words: Hawking, Metropolis, Accra, Taskforce, Living, Cit

School Physical Resources and Senior High School Students’ Mathematics Performance in Sagnarigu Municipality of Northern Region, Ghana.

While factors that affect students’ academic performance have been well investigated, the extent to which school physical resources determine students’ performance in Mathematics, to the best knowledge of the researchers, has received less academic attention within the Sagnarigu Municipality and hence the need to delve into the area to determine whether there is a relation between school physical resources and students’ academic performance in mathematics. The study adopted a quantitative approach with a survey design involving 372 students and teachers who were selected through Simple Random sampling technique to participate. Questionnaire was used to gather primary data which was complemented by extensive literature review. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data that was collected from the field. An Ordinary Least Square regression model was used to test the predictive power of school infrastructure, school facilities and teaching and learning materials over students’ performance in mathematics after a correlation statistical test indicated that there were multi-collinearity issues. The analysis revealed that students’ performance in mathematics was closely associated with school infrastructure, school facilities and teaching and learning materials. It was, therefore, recommended that stakeholders in education should ensure that Senior High Schools in Sagnarigu Municipal are given the needed infrastructure, facilities and instructional materials so as to improve instructional quality and raise students’ performance in Mathematics. Keywords: School Physical resources, Teaching and Learning Materials, Infrastructure, Facilities, Performance DOI: 10.7176/JEP/13-30-10 Publication date:October 31st 202

Why Do Women Delay in Seeking Prenatal Care? A Discrete-Time Survival Analysis

This paper evaluates the effect of access to the Ghana national health insurance on the timing of the first prenatal care visit for pregnant women after controlling for other factors. Due to the voluntary nature of the national health insurance program, insurance status is likely endogenous, this paper therefore uses the Multilevel Multiprocess (MLMP) model and the Mixed Proportional Hazard (MPH) model estimation techniques, which controls for endogeneity in survival data analysis. Results from the estimation shows that access to insurance reduces the delays in receiving prenatal care, and increases the probability of seeking prenatal care