The 2017 District League Table (DLT) will soon be launched in the Upper East region.
The DLT, a ranking tool for measuring the level of development in each of the 216 districts in Ghana, is an initiative of CDD-Ghana and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Ghana in collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD).
The DLT ranks the districts in terms of their delivery across six key public service indicators including health, education, security, water, sanitation and governance, and the rankings are done annually, based on information and data provided from the districts themselves.
As a precursor to the launch, a stakeholders' meeting has taken place at Bolgatanga, the Upper East regional capital.
It was organized by the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) Ghana for District Co-ordinating Directors, planning officers and environmental health and sanitation officers from the 13 Municipal and District Assemblies in the region.
Other participants were officers from the Ghana Police Service, senior officers of UNICEF, Tamale Field Office, and some selected regional heads of department.
In a presentation, Madam Mildred Edinam Adraku, Research Officer, CDD-Ghana, explained that the DLT aimed to strengthen social accountability in the development efforts of the country throughout all its districts.
DLT, she said, supported government to better understand and monitor development in the country, while creating the platform for citizens to access information and knowledge on their rights to development in their respective districts.
She, therefore, appealed to management and staff of the Assemblies to have open minds about the DLT, emphasizing that though some Assemblies may rank very low on the table, the purpose was not to name and shame any district.
Touching on the DLT methodology, Madam Adraku disclosed that the selection of the indicators involved a series of discussions with relevant district and national stakeholders and collaborations with vital national entities including Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of state and some development partners such as the UNICEF.
These discussions, she said, took place in all the 10 regions of Ghana, with institutions such as the Ghana Education Service, Ghana Health Service, Ghana Police Service, Ghana Water Company Limited and the Ghana Statistical Service, among others, contributing to the outcomes.
In his remarks, Alhaji Mahamudu A. Azonko, Acting Upper East Regional Co-ordinating Director, and Chairman for the occasion, re-echoed the point that the DLT was not meant to chastise any Assembly but to identify gaps and proffer solutions as well as present an apt platform for the learning of best practices.
Alhaji Azonkor noted that the real implementation of government policies and programmes happened at the district level, which made the Assemblies very important players in national development efforts.
He advised management teams of the Assemblies not to impose projects on the communities but should be guided by the people's felt-needs.
In a statement, Mr Gregory Adda, Head, Policy Planning, Budgeting, Monitoring and Evaluation Division, Local Government Service (LGS), disclosed that in his office's bid to improve institutional and staff capacity, competition and enhanced performance among staff, LGS had developed and was implementing an assessment system called the Local Government Service Performance Contract Management System.
LGS, he said, therefore, regarded DLT as an objective assessment with the potential to engender healthy competition among the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to stimulate performance and further deepen decentralization.
During an open forum, Alhaji Fawei Issifu Mohammed, Acting Co-ordinating Director, Bongo District, admitted that results from the DLT, over the years, had been very helpful to the work of the Assemblies because they served as guides in development planning as well as identified the areas that required peculiar attention in the allocation of resources.
Source: ISD (Peter Atogewe Wedam)
Read Full Story
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Google+
YouTube
LinkedIn
RSS