The Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Nii Lante Vanderpuye, has urged Ghanaians to redirect their energies towards local governance in order to facilitate the development of the nation.
Speaking at the launch of the Centre for Local Government Advocacy (CLGA) in Accra on Tuesday, he stated that since Ghanaians had not given local governance the values, expectation, materials, resources and attention it deserved, the country was far behind in local sector development.
The Government’s role
The centre, which is a non-partisan, non-profit organisation, will serve as a new voice for local governance advocacy by providing unadulterated facts for policy makers and politicians to use in order to promote local administration in the country.
It will also train the various local assemblies to promote an efficient and quality management in the local sector and also serve as a place of research on the local government system.
Emphasising the need to provide quality training for the human resource at the local level, Nii Vanderpuye said business minds were needed to manage the local assemblies.
He gave the assurance that the ministry was going to support the initiative by collaborating with the CLGA to enable them to achieve its objectives.
‘’The vision of the ministry is to achieve a sustainable and equitable economic growth through citizen participation, and accelerated service delivery at the local level within a decentralised environment,’’ he added.
Decentralisation
The Executive Director for the Centre for Local Government Advocacy, Dr Vladimir Antwi Danso, stressed the need for decentralisation and stated that it was going to be the major tool in facilitating the advocacy initiatives of the CLGA, pointing out that it had served as a socio-economic boost for many developed countries.
He cited China as an example of a country that had used decentralisation as an institutional framework for their phenomenal industrial growth.
He, however, expressed his disappointment with the government for failing to provide the necessary framework for effective decentralisation. “This is partly because of the lack of enthusiasm on the part of government and partly due to the absence of advocacy institutions,” he added.
