Coordinating directors charged to live up to task
Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur has challenged metropolitan, municipal and district coordinating directors (MMDCDs) to live up to expectation in the discharge of their duties in the country’s decentralisation process.
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He said as direct supervisors of the assemblies, they should consider it incumbent on them to work diligently since they could not escape responsibility for any administrative failures.
Mr Amissah-Arthur was addressing the third conference of MMDCDs in Cape Coast on Thursday. The theme for the conference was: “Effective leadership for sustainable local level service delivery: The role of the coordinating director.”
The Vice-President said while chief executives could sometimes be excused for non-performance because they were not specifically trained for the task, MMDCDs could not be absolved from inefficiencies and ineffectiveness.
He said the expectation was that MMDCDs must be good administrators, as well as conversant with the decentralised departments they coordinated.
He said very soon, their level of activities would increase when the Ghana Health Service and the Ghana Education Service are migrated onto the MMDAs to function under the assemblies.
Migration
He said the migration of those two services would take place at the same time after the government had approved the second phase of the decentralisation policy framework and the national decentralisation action plan for implementation from 2015 to 2019.
“While the second decentralisation policy framework explains what is going to be done during the period, the second national decentralisation action plan is about who is going to be responsible and at what time during the period,” he stressed.
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The Vice-President said for the country’s decentralisation to have any meaning, there was the need to pay attention to the effective functioning of sub-district structures.
Road maps
He, therefore, called on MMDCDs to prepare road maps for all DCEs designed to ensure that by the end of 2016, every sub-metropolitan, urban, zonal, town and area council and unit committee would be operational in terms of membership, functions, financing and service delivery.
He commended the MMDCDs for implementing the President’s directive for all streets to be named and the names advertised on the streets.
The Vice-President stressed the need for teamwork among MMDCDs, DCEs and staff of the assemblies as a prerequisite for a successful decentralisation process.
In a speech read on his behalf, the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Alhaji Collins Dauda, urged the MMDCDs to move beyond political polarisation to the development of their areas.
“It is my expectation that as agents of change and drivers of development at the district level, you will keep the government’s priorities in focus when developing your indicators for subsequent performance contracts,” he said.
The Central Regional Minister, Mr Aquinas Tawiah Quansah, said it was necessary for the leadership of the MMDAs to be more committed and proactive, so that their work would impact positively on development at the local and national levels.