Take district-level elections seriously- Electorate told
The Manager in charge of the Social Accountability Platform for Local Governance Performance in Ghana Project, Nana Ofei Kwesi Agyeman, has reminded the electorate to take district-level elections more seriously by electing committed and hardworking assembly members to help turn the fortunes of the various electoral areas around.
Advertisement
He entreated media practitioners to step up publicity and educate the public through write-ups as the Electoral Commission prepared to re-organise the exercise.
Nana Agyeman stated this in an interview with the Daily Graphic in Tamale during a two-day capacity-building programme on social auditing for civil society organisations (CSOs) and media practitioners from the Brong-Ahafo, Ashanti, Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions.
The programme was organised by the Social Accountability Platform for Local Governance Performance in Ghana Project with support from the European Union.
Nana Agyeman noted that, "Media practitioners should come out with more feature articles focusing on the candidates and their policies that would enhance decentralisation which is now the bedrock of the country's democratic dispensation."
The manager also reminded CSOs and the media to deepen their watchdog roles at the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) level to ensure that quality services were rendered.
He said until the Right to the Information Bill was passed into law, social auditing would continue to be a problem.
He entreated CSOs "to push hard for the bill to be passed into law."
Other Trending Stories
He said although there were benefits that could be accrued from social auditing, including creating public awareness of service delivery gaps, assisting in building the trust and confidence between citizens and service providers and holding public officials accountable, beneficiaries of corruption might want to manipulate the processes to their advantage.
The Deputy Director of the Institute of Local Government Studies, Tamale Campus, Dr Richard Kambootah, said social auditing, sometimes referred to as social accountability, was a tool often used to monitor and assess how government policies and programmes were implemented at the district level to ensure quality service delivery as well as address the issue of accountability.