Stakeholders at a national meeting on decentralised governance held in Accra have called for the formation of a coalition of civil society organisations (CSOs) to spearhead the timely release of Common Fund allocations to the various district assemblies across the country.
Their contention is that even though successive governments had touted the principles of decentralised governance, they had failed to ensure the timely release of the funds needed for the assemblies to function effectively.
Such a coalition, they said, would, therefore, have to pursue a rigorous agenda to make the government provide the requisite funding for the decentralisation exercise.
That, they said, would ensure that the development plans and programmes of district assemblies in remote areas of the country were not thrown out of gear.
GACC engagement
The meeting which was organised by the Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) was to engage the stakeholders to find ways of promoting citizens’ participation for better service delivery and development at the local level.
The meeting followed the outcome of an intervention undertaken by the GACC in two districts in the Western Region and funded by the USAID through the Management Systems International (MSI) and the Local Governance Decentralisation Programme (LOGODEP). The two districts are Bibiani-Anhwiaso-Bekwai and Sefwi-Wiawso.
The gathering was unanimous in its view that quite often donor partners were ready with their portion of funding but counterpart funding from the government was always delayed, thus thwarting efforts to speed up the development of deprived areas.
The other alternative, the stakeholders said, was the streamlining of revenue generating avenues in the assemblies to ensure an effective generation of revenue for development..
For a start, they called for the collection of data on all properties in the districts to enable the assemblies to collect property rate on them.
Throwing light on the project undertaken in the two districts, a Programmes Officer of the GACC, Ms Sandra Arthur, said the goal of the project was to promote social accountability at the district level through the involvement of civil society in monitoring the district assemblies’ budgetary processes and project implementation.
Way forward
Among lessons learnt, she said, was that duty-bearers, especially assembly members, did not see themselves as being accountable to the communities they represented, hence communities did not receive any feedback from their assembly members.
As a way forward, the stakeholders recommended, among others, that the “assemblies should create platforms to engage citizens in the planning process and provide adequate feedback to them on fund utilisation at the assembly.”
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