New Local Government Act ready next year

A new local government act aimed at changing it from its present form into one that supports research in applied science and technology and targeted at empowering local businesses is expected to be ready next year. 

The bill, which is currently before Parliament, will lead to government relinquishing about 65 per cent of its authority into the hands of local authorities. Under the new system, government’s role in local governance will only be supervisory.  The Head of the Local Government Service, Dr Callistus Mahama, made the statement at a meeting for metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) in Kumasi last Wednesday at which an accelerated economic and social development programme for MMDAs was launched.Dr Mahama said the new act included elements of the Local Service Act, the Internal Audit Act, the District Assemblies Common Fund, the National Development Act and the Internal Audit Agency Act.The programme is a collaboration between the Local Government Service and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) with the aim of tapping the knowledge of experts from the university in research activities of the assemblies.  The programme is structured into phases. In the first phase, the KNUST will undertake a needs assessment to identify the business potential of all the 216 assemblies nation-wide. When this is done, the Local Government Service will provide funding to set them up.A seed money of GH¢1 million has been earmarked for the assessment of business potential in the various districts across the country.  A second phase of the programme will be contingent on the assessment report emanating from the first phase.Dr Mahama observed that even though most assemblies were sitting on gold, they were somewhat ignorant of it. As such,  it was the duty of the universities in the country to use their research capabilities to help communities unearth their unique potential to speed up the development of their areas.   By courtesy of the programme, the youth in various communities are expected to gain entrepreneurial training and build up their capacities to improve on their income and livelihoods.The Vice-Chancellor of the KNUST, Professor Kwesi Obiri-Danso, said the KNUST was ready to assist communities that were endowed with mangoes, for instance, with research findings the institution had undertaken to help those communities set up processing factories that would add value to the crop for both local and foreign markets. He said, however, that what Ghana needed presently was an enforcement of its local government laws, else all the lofty ideas would not be actualised.To this end, he called for the construction of public toilets to be banned and the focus shifted rather on each home having a toilet facility as specified by the law.