MMDAs asked to deepen, promote local democracy

Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) should keep abreast of local economic development programmes to promote community participation and accountability to the people, the Head of Local Government Service (LGS), Dr Nana Ato Arthur, has urged.

He said as a way of deepening local democracy, stakeholders in local government had a moral obligation to ensure that their policies were geared towards those objectives.

Dr Arthur was addressing a forum of LGS in Cape Coast, as part of his familiarity tour of the regions last Thursday.

Capacity building

“Let me emphasise the need to build capacity at both the regional and district levels for effective monitoring and evaluation of our policies and programmes,” Dr Arthur stated.

He said it was to achieve results that his directorate strongly advocated and succeeded in getting all the Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs) resourced to play their mandatory role of monitoring and evaluating the assemblies.

Achievements

Dr Arthur noted for instance that the RCCs’ budgets were decoupled from the central government and beefed up with extra resources, stressing that several projects were also being implemented to provide the needed support and resources for the MMDAs.

“The quality of our democracy will largely be determined by the extent to which institutions that we have created are impacting the lives of our people positively or better,” he said.

Speaking on the thematic areas on which his tenure would focus, Dr Arthur mentioned capacity building of LGS staff, promotion of ICT to improve revenue mobilisation, and the strengthening of the planning units of the RCCs and MMDAs.

Policy

On the issue of the government policy to have MMDCEs elected, Dr Arthur said the key staff of the MMDAs would be oriented and positioned to provide the necessary support for the policy to take off to deepen accountable local governance and transparency.

Dr Arthur also bemoaned the use of social media by professional classes to propagate falsehood, a practice which he said might be detrimental to the service.

Reforms

The Central Regional Minister, Mr Kwamena Duncan, said it was gratifying that the appointment of the MMDCEs had come at a time the LGS was introducing a lot of reforms to reposition itself to be a key player in the common desire, as a nation, to bring development to the people.