CDD Ghana to promote participatory local governance
The Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has commenced an initiative dubbed, ‘Youth Voices Project (YVP)’, to create a platform for building sustainable partnership between youth groups and local authorities towards promoting a more inclusive and participatory local governance system in the Tamale metropolis.
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The project, which involves community-based youth groups in the metropolis, aims at reducing violence and misunderstandings through dialogue to foster peace and unity among the youth in the area.
The CDD-Ghana Tamale office has already created an interactive platform for 25 community-based youth groups with diverse backgrounds, including having different political affiliations, with the objective of promoting harmony and development.
Among issues discussed at the two-day leadership and policy education workshop in Tamale on Wednesday were group dynamics and team building, communication and public speaking skills, improving police-community relations and promoting social accountability.
It was on the theme: “Building a productive youth for development in Northern Ghana.”
Other stakeholders supporting the CDD in the implementation of the project are the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly, the National Youth Authority and the police. The rest are the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), the inter-party youth dialogue committee and the regional youth platform.
According to the Programmes Manager in charge of the Northern Region office of CDD-Ghana, Mr Paul Osei-Kufuor, there have been intermittent disturbances among the youth in the metropolis in expressing their disaffection over political, religious and chieftaincy matters.
“Such agitation has fostered a relatively high level of mistrust and suspicion between the youth and local authorities, a development that undermines effective local governance based on dialogue and citizens’ participation,” he observed.
Mr Osei-Kufuor indicated that it was for those reasons the project was initiated to create a stage for a collective voice since the youth in the area did not have any effective interactive platform to discuss common issues and challenges facing them.
He further observed that majority of the youth lacked the needed skills and capacity to enhance their livelihoods and entreated “politicians to stop giving hand-outs and freebies to young people as a way of winning their loyalty but seek their long-term survival and livelihood.”
The Tamale Metropolitan Director of the National Youth Authority, Mr Gyan Ansah, called for the active involvement and participation of the youth in policy and development issues, since those issues impacted on their lives, stressing, “the youth of Ghana cannot be passive beneficiaries in the development of our nation; they must be involved in nation building.”
He emphasised the need to strengthen policies and create opportunities that would empower the youth to do their best in their respective chosen careers.
In a speech read on his behalf, the Metropolitan Chief Executive of Tamale, Mr Hanan Gundadow, announced the institution of a social accountability forum by the assembly to inform residents about its work and also afford the people the opportunity to question them on their stewardship.
“We should try and admonish one another to desist from confrontation and use of violence to address our differences and endeavour to see our political opponents as friends, since politics is an industry that is geared towards the common good of the citizenry,” he stated.