By Albert Futukpor, GNA
Tamale, Oct. 16, GNA – District town-hall and community meetings would be held monthly to disseminate the outcome of performance audits using scorecards, which have been developed with the involvement of citizens and civil society organisations.
This initiative is spearheaded by the Ghana’s Strengthening Accountability Mechanisms (GSAM) project, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Ghana Audit Service (GAS).
This was contained in a statement issued by the GSAM project implementers and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Tamale on Wednesday.
The GAS conducted performance audits to assess the quality of selected infrastructural projects and evaluated value-for-money in public budgeting of 50 selected district assemblies located in regions including Northern, North East and Savannah.
The projects include classroom blocks, health centres, teachers and nurses quarters, and toilet facilities.
The audit reports show how well or poorly the projects were executed and whether the assemblies followed due process in planning, tendering, contracting, monitoring and supervising those projects.
Scorecards that rate the performance of the selected district assemblies have been generated based on the performance audit findings and will be available to citizens from November, 2019.
The statement said, “The initiative is to increase citizens’ access to information on the performance of their assemblies in terms of infrastructural projects and make it possible for them to use the information to demand accountability, improved quality of infrastructural projects and value for money in public spending”.
It said “it is expected that citizens of districts that receive positive ratings would have an improved understanding of the efforts of their local government authorities, whilst citizens of districts that receive negative ratings would demand improved service delivery”.
Constituents of audited districts are rarely informed of audit results.
It said “USAID supported the GAS to conduct similar performance audits on Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies infrastructure in another set of 50 districts in 2014 and the findings were disseminated between 2015 and 2016”.
GSAM works to improve accountability, transparency and performance at the local government level by strengthening both central government and citizen’s oversight of capital projects in 100 districts.
It is implemented by a consortium comprising CARE International, Oxfam and the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC), in collaboration with the GAS, the implementing district assemblies and other civil society organizations.
GNA
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