District Oversight Committees (DOCs) of the African Peer Review Mechanism have been advised to not elect people with political affiliations to serve on the committees.
This is because people with political affiliations tend to promote their ambitions and those of their parties, thus hampering the work of the DOCs.
Mr Eric Adu of the APRM GC (Governing Council) made the appeal in Kumasi on Wednesday at a three-day training of trainers workshop for DOC members from six districts of three regions.
The workshop, on the theme: “Strengthening the role APRM DOCs in promoting good governance in Ghana”, was organised by the APRM GC in collaboration with the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), and sponsored by Hans Seidel Foundation of Germany.
Role of DOCs
Mr Adu said the DOCs were to provide metropolitan, municipal and district officials, and partners (civil society organisations) and civic leaders with a practical tool to conduct self-evaluation of good governance and effective service delivery.
He said they were to identify the principal strengths and weaknesses of good governance and service delivery and ways to further consolidate strengths and to rectify weaknesses and stimulate further thinking on the ways to define and describe the best ways to structure and practise good governance and service delivery.
He said the DOCs were made up of nine members elected from the civil society organisations from each district, with the district director of NCCE serving as an ex officio member.
DOCs help in the promotion of good governance at the district level and also assist in the evaluation and monitoring of activities and also educate the citizenry on the APRM process.
He said due to the nature of the work of the DOCs, having people with political affiliations on them usually derailed their work and advised the committees to not mix their work with politics since they were supposed to be apolitical in their work.
Challenges
Mr Adu cited lack of adequate skills and know-how of the DOCs to engage civil society organisation (CSOs) effectively and lack of sufficient engagement and consultation with the CSO as some of the challenges facing the DOCs.
He said the DOCs required an understanding of the nature and functioning of the CSOs in their localities and skills and strategies for engagement, which some of the DOCs lacked.
The Director of Programmes of NCCE, Samuel Akuamoah, said the DOCs played a critical role in the work of the APRM, hence the need to build their capacity for them to be able to deliver on their mandate.
He said it would have been ideal to train all the members of DOCs but due to lack of resources, few of them had been selected and they would have to impart the knowledge to their colleagues back in their districts.
Participants
In all, 60 members from two districts each from Brong Ahafo, Upper West and Ashanti regions have been selected to take part in the three-day workshop to build their capacity to enable them to deliver on their mandate.
The districts are Adansi South and Sekyere South in Ashanti; Wenchi and Kiampo North in the Brong Ahafo; and Wa West and Sissala West in the Upper West Region.
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