District Assemblies Urged To Work Closely With CSOs

Participants at stakeholder’s consultative meeting in Accra on 24 June have called on Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to work closely with each other in order tomaximize the impact of development interventions at the local level.

They called for full implementation of the National Decentralization Action Plan (NDAP) which among others has the objective to clarify and strengthen the roles and relationships between key non-state actors such as the traditional authorities and civil society groups in local governance.

The 2010 national policy framework is intended to accelerate the decentralization effort towards the ends envisaged in the Fourth Republican Constitution and to give the process the clarity and consistency and certainty required to promote local level governance and development. This plan is guided by that goal and the following policy objectives:

i. To clarify the status, roles and relationships between levels of government and different actors to strengthen their participation in and contribution to local governance;

ii. To improve the administrative and human resource capacity of the MMDAs and other local government stakeholders to ensure quality service delivery;

iii. To strengthen the capacity for, coordination and implementation of spatial, physical and development planning at the local level and its integration with budgeting and the national agenda, generally;

iv. To facilitate economic growth, employment and income generation in order to promote household welfare and alleviate poverty;

v. To improve funding and financial management of MMDAs;

vi. To promote local democracy, participation and accountability through strong and more viable stakeholder involvement in local governance;

vii. To promote a rights-based orientation to local level development, ensuring equitable access to public resources and inclusiveness in decision-making;

ix. To streamline, harmonize and coordinate development partner interventions to ensure optimal use of donor resources for local level development;

x. Finally to facilitate effective policy coordination and collaboration for smooth devolution of political, administrative and financial authority from the centre to the assemblies.

The implementation of the National Decentralization Action Plan is expected to end in July 2014. However there are still a lot of outstanding activities yet to be implemented.

The Decentralisation Policy Framework Progress report was published in December, 2013