By Rashid Mbugri, GNA
Tamale, Sept 28, GNA - The Most Reverend Peter Paul Angkyier, the Bishop of the Damongo Diocese, has advised citizens at the grassroots level to actively participate in local governance to ensure accountability within their communities.
This, he said, would assist in abating the inadequacy in local development that affected citizens' well-being in the country.
He made the statement on Thursday in Tamale, during a workshop organized by the Tamale Ecclesiastical Province Pastoral Conference (TEPPCON) on its Civic Education project dubbed: "Strengthening Citizen Participation in Local Governance in the Tamale Ecclesiastical Province" and funded by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS).
The workshop was aimed at empowering key stakeholders to ensure all-inclusiveness and citizens active participation in governance especially within selected districts of the Tamale Ecclesiastical province, which included Wa, Tamale, Yendi, Damango and Navrongo -Bolgatanga Dioceses in the three northern regions.
The Most Rev. Angkyier said the three-year project, (2017-2020) was focused on mobilising and strengthening the capacity of citizens' groups to engage and demand for accountability from local government authorities on the development of their communities.
He said citizens should be encouraged to mobilise and engage their various district assemblies to provide knowledge and information about their operations as well as provide content of engagement between the assemblies and the citizens to help improve on development services.
The Most Rev Angkyier, however, advised the participants of the project on the need to effectively discuss with their respective Bishops on the activities they intended to carry out in their dioceses, their objectives and the indicators after each activity.
He said the participants should be more concerned about the effectiveness of the project outcome and service to the people in their communities in the interest of TEPPCON than being particularly concerned about the financial gains.
Most Rev Angkyier reminded all participants involved in the project that decent and good financial reporting and accountability as required by the donor (KAS) were critical for the sustainability of donor-partner relationship.
Rev. Father Dr Matthias Mornah, the Judiciary Vicar of Tamale Inter-Diocesan Tribunal, speaking on the role of the Catholic Church’s social teaching in strengthening citizen participation in local governance, said that the social teachings of the Church were derived from natural laws and Divine revelation that guided the organization of society and ensured the just ordering of the whole social economy.
He said the Church had the God given mission and the unique capacity to call people to live with integrity, compassion, responsibility and concern for others as well as hold them accountable.
Reverend Father Mornah, however, recommended that government should hasten its promise to return all mission schools to the churches as well as empower their Education Units to help ensure the modification of their curriculum to make room for proper education of their children.
Alhaji Hazic Al-Hussein Zakaria, the Executive Director for Community Development and Youth Advisory Center (CODEYAC), speaking on the relevance of Islamic values of social teaching in strengthening citizen participation in local governance, said Islam makes reference to law and order in relations to groups in view of the fact that the totality of the society had the responsibility of ensuring law and order and development.
He said every individual was fully responsible for ensuring that group interest was fully pursued to ensure cohesive and collective responsibility in matters of interest to the whole society.
Alhaji Zakaria said Islam also recommend that people should cooperate with each other in all matters and more particularly matters of governance.
GNA
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