Regional ministers, coordinating directors sign performance contract
Dominic Moses Awiah
Regional ministers and their coordinating directors on Friday signed performance contracts with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development in Accra.
The agreement provides the basis for the assessment of regional ministers and their co-ordinating directors at the end of the year.
Under the agreement, the regional ministers and their coordinating directors are required to ensure local revenue generation, education, infrastructure development, social protection and institutional capacity development.
The Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Hajia Alima Mahama, and the Head of the Local Government Service, Dr Nana Ato Arthur, signed on behalf of the government, while the regional was to bring every individual on board the government’s agenda to achieve its development goals.
She noted that the contracts would also put the leadership, management skills and competences of the regional ministers, as well as coordinating directors to test.
Hajia Alima Mahama mentioned local revenue generation, education, infrastructure development, social protection and institutional capacity development as the top priority areas of this year’s contract.
She said all the policies of the government would not see the light of day without strong local governance institutions and tasked the coordinating directors to ensure that all metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) led the agenda through proper supervision.
“It is, therefore, timely that the service sets realistic and achievable targets aimed principally at contributing towards the implementation of these flagship projects,” Hajia Mahama said.
Get on board
In his remarks, Dr Arthur expressed the view that there was the need for public service officials to be given a performance target.
He explained that the setting of performance targets would ensure that metropolitan, municipal and district chief executives, as well as heads of institutions discharged their duties effectively and efficiently.
Dr Arthur explained that the performance would be assessed and reviewed quarterly to reward performing ministers and sanction non-performing ones.
He said the relevance of the performance contract was to monitor, evaluate and assess the performance of ministers to ensure prudent utilisation of resources.