Mr Mohammed Awal, the Research Manager, Team Leader, Social Accountability and SDGs at the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) has called on the government to strengthen local government structures to be accountable to citizens.
He stressed that Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies spearheaded the development of communities, however, worried the regular and prompt inflow of central government resources remained a setback in executing their development mandate.
Mr Awal made the call when speaking at a two-day capacity training workshop in Tamale, saying “the district assemblies need resources to be able to bring development but all the taxes we collect are centralised at the national level”.
The CDD-Ghana is being attended by policy actors, CSOs and the media, selected from its Evidence for Development (E4D) project implementation districts in the country.
It sought to reflect on the current state of evidence use in policy and practice, and to identify lessons learned to advance the institutionalisation of evidence-informed decision-making practices at the local levels.
CDD-Ghana, with support from Hewlett Foundation, implemented the E4D project from 2019 to 2021 to strengthen the capacity of government policy actors in evidence-informed policy making to improve social development outcomes.
The project also seeks to motivate government policy actors to access and use the best available data and evidence to inform policies and programme implementation at the sub-national and district levels of the country.
Mr Awal expressed concern that the District Assembly Common Fund (DAFC), meant to support the assemblies to undertake development projects did not flow regularly, a situation he added was ‘defeating’ the tenets of the nation’s decentralisation system.
The government ought to do more to make the local government structures to function for the purposes of development.
Mr Awal advised the media and Civil Society Organisations to amplify community challenges and help deepen transparency and accountability in the utilization of resources at the local levels.
He also underscored the need for local communities to be aware of the operations and limitations of the District Assemblies and to demand for developments.
In a group discussion, some of the participants called on Community-based Organisations (CBOs) and the media to endeavour to use evidence-based approaches in advocacy campaigns to effect societal change and drive local development.
They must also strive to avoid biases, de-politicised issues, and endeavour to credit their data sources to guarantee their credibility too.
GNA