Assemblies must be transparent to prevent corruption accusations – CoP
The Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) has been urged to be transparent and open up to the citizenry and their stakeholders on developmental projects processes to prevent accusations of corruption.
Mr. Clement Tandoh, Chief of Party (CoP) of the Ghana’s Strengthening Accountability Mechanisms (GSAM) gave the advice in an interview with Journalists after the opening of a two-day forum on the effective use of social media platforms for Citizen-Local Government Dialogue on capital projects in Sunyani.
The forum attended by 39 participants who comprised of Planning Officers from selected MMDAs in the Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo Regions and representatives of some civil society organisations was jointly organised by the United States Agency for International Development(USAID), CARE International, Oxfam Ghana and the integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC).
It aimed at identifying appropriate social media platforms for promoting citizen-local government dialogue on capital projects and how to monitor, evaluate and report on the use of social media.
Mr. Tandoh said all the necessary information on the execution of any developmental project should be made available to the public, particularly the media from the onset to ensure transparency as a well building the trust between the public and the Assemblies.
He emphasised the citizenry must not only to use the local FM Radio Stations to criticise the Assemblies about the implementation of projects but should also take advantage of the introduction of the score cards to assess their performances in ensuring quality developmental projects to better the lives of the people.
Mr. Tandoh said GSAM introduced in 2014 sought to strengthen citizen’s oversight of capital projects to improve local government transparency, accountability and performances in 100 MMDAs in Ghana.
He observed that a lot of people before the GSAM project felt cheated by the Assemblies for not providing them with the right and quality developmental projects and also did not understand the developmental processes because the Assemblies did not make information available and accessible to them.
Mr. Mohammed Nurudeen Salifu, communication specialist, GSAM stated that social media can help the people to get updates about projects being implemented in their communities and also enable the Assemblies to get feedbacks from the people.
Source: GNA