Media asked to champion crusade on social accountability
The media have been asked to lead the crusade for social accountability among the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), and government institutions, to ensure the realization of the goals of the Better Ghana Agenda.
This is because a lot of funds are being injected into the MMDAs, and there is the need for journalists to play there watch-dog role effectively to enhance transparency and social accountability.
The Central Regional Coordinating Director, Mr Kwame Oppong, who made the call, also challenged the media to put the MMDAs on their toes, to ensure that they complete all development projects on schedule.
He was speaking at a day’s sensitization workshop on “Local government capacity support Project” ( LGCSP), organized for more than 30 media personnel, including staff of the Information Services Department from the Central Region, in Cape Coast .
The workshop, which was jointly organized by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, was to sensitize the media on the local government capacity support project, to enable journalists to adequately report on public finance management .
Mr Oppong said the LGCSP was targeted at strengthening the MMDAS for accountable local governance and improved services delivery.
He said that government was committed to the implementation of the project and would closely monitor all the projects being executed under LGCSP.
Mr Oppong called on the MMDAs to follow rules and regulations instituted for the implementation of the project.
He said that if the project is well implemented it would help reduce poverty among the Upper West, Upper East and Northern and Central Regions .
Mrs Irene Messiba, workshop facilitator from the MLGRD, said the project was a $175 million government of Ghana-World Bank initiative, which would be implemented over a five year period and is targeted at the existing 46 Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies (MMAs) in the country.
She said the project was modeled on the Functional Organizational Assessment Tool and District Development Facility (DDF).
It would provide an integrated support to build the capacity of the MMAs, as well as build on the incentive-driven approach to enhance MMDAs performance through the DDF.
Mrs Messiba said that so far 10 million dollars have been released to the beneficiary MMAs of which seven MMAs in the Central Region were also benefiting and that the MLGRD was negotiating with the Work Bank to consider extending the support to the newly created districts.
Mrs Messiba explained that the beneficiary institutions were to use the funds strictly for development projects, such as building of classroom blocks, roads, hospitals and the completion of abandoned development projects in the various districts, and other infrastructure, but not as a recurrent expenditure for the MMAs.
She said that the LGCSP has four key components, with the first component aimed at strengthening the fiscal framework for decentralization, while the second component is aimed at enhancing decentralized urban service delivery.
The third component aims at stimulating demands for accountable governance and service delivery and the fourth would cover institutional and project management support.
Mrs Messiba explained that the main aim of the third component was to assist in the development of media network, through the provision of knowledge and capacity building.
This, she said, would enable journalists to report effectively on local government financial management as well as generate civil society demands for financial information from MMAs and to strengthen the capacity and engagement of citizens representative on the budget and service delivery issues.
Mrs Messiba said the LGCSP would also target budgeting, reporting and auditing systems, revenue management, asset management and social accountability identified in the National decentralization Action Plan.
Source: GNA