Tamale, June 7, GNA - Mr. Moses Bukari Mabengba, Deputy Northern Regional Minister, on Sunday appealed to Ghanaians to work harder to increase productivity.

He said this would help reduce hunger and improve health and education in the country and enable the people to cope with the current global economic crisis. Mr. Mabengba said that hunger could result in malnourishment and affect Intelligent Quotients (IQ) of people and impact negatively on the country's human resource base. He was addressing participants, who had walked for about two hours through the principal streets of Tamale, to raise funds to support the fight against hunger in the world. The programme that was organised by the World Food Programme (WFP), under the theme: "End hunger, walk the world 2009", is an annual event. Mr. Mabengba called for the maintenance of food-based safety-net programmes for vulnerable children since hunger could affect their growth and development.

Mr. Ahmed Saeed, Head of the Tamale sub-office of the WFP, said despite the global financial crisis, children in Ghana were well fed adding that "recent surveys show that the number of malnourished children living in the country had reduced". He gave the assurance that the WFP would help reduce hunger and malnourishment in the country by continuously buying food produced in Ghana to support the School Feeding Programme. 7