Takoradi, Nov. 25, GNA - Mr Joseph Aidoo, Western Regional Minister said on Monday that about 70 percent of the rural population did not have access to potable water while only 16 percent had access to sanitation facilities.

He said poor targeting of poverty reduction strategies, the inability to utilise the potentials of the poor, and the absence of reliable impact tracking and monitoring had resulted in the present state of affairs.

These were contained in a speech read for him at the opening of a five-day workshop at Takoradi on Poverty Profiling and Pro-poor programming for nine district coordinating directors and some District Chief Executives in the Western Region.

The workshop is being organised by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD) and the Social Investment Fund (SIF) with sponsorship from the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ).

Mr Aidoo said it was sad that 38 percent of Ghanaians were still poor, adding that to reverse the trend, policies had been fashioned out to eliminate it.

"This systematic and sustainable policy is meant to address the characteristics of poverty in the country and bring the poor into the mainstream of wealth creation," he added.

Mrs Elisabeth Abena Nkrumah, Western Regional Officer of the SIF, said so far over 800 projects had been approved with 80 of them located in the Western Region.

She said projects in the region were estimated at 11.3 billion cedis but only five billion cedis had been disbursed so far.