Civil Society Organisations in Northern Ghana have decried the criteria by which government recently allocated funds from the gains of the HIPC initiative to district assemblies.

They claim Northern Ghana has been short-changed.

They have, therefore, called on the government to make public the criteria used in making this initial allocation to the assemblies; come out with the criteria of allocation as contained in the GPRS document and make public, criteria for subsequent allocations in order to ensure transparency, they stressed.

A press statement signed by the Executive Secretary of the Northern Ghana Network for Development (The network consisting of NGOs in the three northern regions), Mr. Ishmael Lansah, said the allocation did not conform to the criteria recommended by the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) document.

The GPRS document, according to the statement, "prescribes that allocation from HIPC funds will be based on the regional variations in the level of deprivation and the intensity of poverty."

The statement said: "it is widely known that the three northern regions are the most deprived and have the highest poverty levels in the country, but the recent allocation did not seem to recognize this and applied a strange formula."

It pointed out that in preparing the GPRS document the poverty situation in the north was touted all over but the area is not being given prominence now that the allocation of funds is due.

The statement added that the poverty situation in the north needed to be looked at with all the seriousness and reality it deserves, instead of using it to source funding and relegating it to the background when it comes to allocation.

It said, according to The Ghana Living Standards Survey IV, which was used for the GPRS, "between 1992 and 1999 while poverty reduced at the national level by 12.2%, it significantly increased within this same period in the north.

In the Upper East Region for example, poverty increased by as much as 21.3%.

While in Northern Region poverty is reported to have increased by 5.8%

" The Civil Society Organisations sought to know the role of Parliament in the mobilisation and disbursement of funds from the HIPC initiative and appealed to the northern caucus in Parliament to "bury their parochial differences and form a united front to ensure that the north maximises any benefits from the HIPC initiative."