Advisory board inaugurated to look at challenges of slums
A 13-member Community Social Investment Facility (C-SIF) Advisory Board was inaugurated yesterday to address issues of slums and the development of settlement communities in Accra.
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Established under the Land Services and Citizenship (LSC) programme, the board will offer strategic advice on priorities for the prudent allocation of funds to enable slum dwellers and settlements-based community organisations to access grants to finance initiatives to meet their needs.
It will also ensure that the objectives of the C-SIF are adequately followed in practical terms, such as ensuring that strategies to address potential threats to the C-SIF’s success are identified.
Representatives on the board are drawn from the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, the Ministry of Finance, the National Association of Local Authorities of Ghana (NALAG), the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) and the United Nations Habitat Ghana.
Others are from settlement and municipal level urban poor organisations, settlement and municipal level urban poor organisations contributing to the CSIF, civil society organisations in urban housing, Slum Dwellers International, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the People’s Dialogue, a non-governmental organisation with focus on human rights settlements.
About the LSC programme
The LSC programme is a partnership initiative undertaken by the government of Ghana and its stakeholders to align urban development efforts at the national, city and community levels.
Its activities centre on the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) and they are designed to evolve into a national initiative through the systematic sharing of experiences with all urban local governments in the country.
Population growth
Inaugurating the board at a ceremony in Accra yesterday, the Director of Policy at the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Joseph Obeng-Poku, said Ghana, in the last few decades, had experienced a drastic shift in pollution from rural areas to the urban areas.
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As a result of this emergence, he said, the country had experienced pockets of slum settlements and their associated urban sprawl, hence the urgent need to come up with measures that would create inclusive cities without slums in order to maximise the potential of urbanisation.
He urged all metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) to effectively manage the funds that had been set up to benefit the urban poor in the selected localities.
Speaking on behalf of the members of the board, the Chief Executive Officer of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly, Mr Isaac Ashai Odamtten, expressed the gratitude of members to the ministry for the confidence it had in them to implement such an important task.
He said members would work hard to ensure the implementation of the investment facility.