YOWE organises town hall meeting at Lower Manya
Municipal, Metropolitan and District Assemblies (MMDAs) have been urged to include women and vulnerable groups in project implementation phases in communities where they operate.
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The MMDAs are also to make content of contract document known to critical stakeholders in the communities where projects are to be sited.
Participants in the meeting also suggested that contractors working on projects must be educated on the relevant portions of the Local Government Act, particularly Act 480, which guides contractors on detailed description of intended works as a means of achieving value for money.
These were among other recommendations made at the end of a town hall meeting at Odumase Krobo in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality in the Eastern Region. The meeting was organised by the Youth and Women Empowerment (YOWE), a non-governmental organisation (NGO).
GSAM Project
The town hall meeting was organised as part of a programme dubbed Ghana Strengthening Accountability Mechanisms (GSAM), which is a five-year governance programme that seeks to strengthen citizens’ oversight of capital development projects. Its aim is to improve transparency, accountability and performance in local government.
Expected outcomes
The GSAM programme is sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and is expected to contribute to building stronger civil society organisations, ensure citizens are better informed and empowered to participate effectively in development at the local level, as well as make service providers more accountable and responsive.
The town hall meeting assessed a three-classroom block for Abordornya and Community-based Health Planning Services (CHPS) Compound for Nuaso, both suburbs of Odumase-Krobo in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality.
The performance of the municipal assembly regarding project initiation and planning, procurement and contracting, project execution and citizens’ perception of the projects were also assessed.
The assembly had a score of 61 percent on the two selected projects that were assessed.
Coordinating Director
The Coordinating Director of the Lower Manya Krobo Municipal Assembly, Mr Eric Hene, was grateful to YOWE for the programme. He said it was a wake-up call for the assembly for it to ensure that the general public was involved in transparency, accountability and public financial management processes.
He added that it was important to be consistently accountable to the people since resources used by the government and the assemblies were from both the public and private sectors.
He stated that MMDAs must ensure that planning, budgeting and project implementation processes were explained to the people, as well as ensure the judicious use of resources given to the assemblies.
“Not involving the people in our work processes has resulted in our poor revenue collection efforts,’’ he said.
He urged the general public to also endeavour to honour their tax obligations in order to enable the assembly to render the required services to the people.
In his opening remarks, the Coordinator for YOWE, Mr Emmanuel Nuertey Siakwa, said the GSAM programme had exposed the people to lapses in project implementation within the communities.
He urged communities to make themselves available whenever they were called upon by the assemblies and make their views known.
Similar meetings were held in the Atimpoku and Asuogyaman districts which performed miserably out of 100 districts that were assessed in the GSAM programme.