Ghanaians should hold non-performing MMDAs accountable – Director
The Head of the Institute of Local Government in Tamale, has called on Ghanaians to hold Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), who fail to qualify for the District Development Facility (DDF) accountable for non-performance.
Mr Richard Kambotaa said it is important for citizens to know that MMDAs who failed to access the facility were denying their people of adequate social infrastructure development and must therefore be held responsible.
Mr Kambotaa made the call during a media engagement organised by the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) and the European Union.
The event was also attended by civil society organisations and local government staff on the Social Accountability Project.
Mr Kambotaa said all that the MMDAs needed to do in order to access the facility was to score high marks in the Functional Organisational Assessment Tools (FOAT) assessment.
He pointed out that unlike the District Assembly Common Fund, the DDF had specific targets and so had little chances of misappropriation.
He asked Ghanaians to monitor and support their Assemblies to qualify for the facility.
Mr Paul Osei Kufuor, Programmes Manager of CDD, Tamale, said the essence of the engagement was to help improve the knowledge of media practitioners in local government issues in order for them to improve on their programme content so that the public would be better informed.
He said the media is better positioned to educate the public on issues of decentralisation and urged the practitioners to take interest in reporting on local government issues.
Participants suggested to the resource persons to consider including the media during the FOAT assessment process so that they would expose areas that the MMDAs failed to perform well in order to better inform citizens to know the specific areas to hold the Assemblies responsible.
The participants were taken through topics such as “Governance: the concept and meaning, “Decentralisation and Local Governance: Basic Facts,” and “Social Accountability: Meaning and Practice.”
Source: GNA