A Queen mother making a contribution
The European Union is supporting Ghana?s decentralization process by championing the inclusion of a component which aims at developing a more comprehensive and harmonised approach to social accountability.
As part of this action, the EU is facilitating a project called the Non-State Actor and Local Authorities in Development (NSA) programme with a focus on social accountability.
Aiming at building a more comprehensive and harmonised approach, the programme is to facilitate participation in local development planning and decision making as well as strengthen the monitoring of local government service delivery and general governance performance at the local level.
In line with this, the Social Accountability Platform under the Institute of Local Government Studies has organized a consultative meeting for representatives of Civil Society Organisations, local government and traditional authorities on the development of guidelines on the call for proposal.
The meeting was intended to provide a platform for dialogue, experience sharing and learning of best practices.
The consultation was also to engage with key stakeholders with the intent to guarantee synergy and harmonisation with the new decentralisation policy objectives and gather inputs for development of guidelines on the call for proposal.
Simon Seddoh Borkor, dean of Management Development and Training at the institute, in his opening remarks, indicated that the platform was intended to build the capacity of Non-State Actor to demand accountability from service providers.
In respect to governance, he mentioned the need for more concerted efforts to ensure the citizenry demanded accountability from duty bearers and therefore advocated the need for Civil Society Organisations, local government and traditional authorities to facilitate the change in order to ensure maximum efforts.
While he tasked the platform to come out with a harmonized matrix in the assessment of social accountability in local governance, he also urged participants to come up with practical tools as to how social accountability could work.
Edward Aboagye, the project manager of the Social Accountability platform indicated the platform was currently conducting a baseline survey and gathering information to inform regional and national consultations.
He therefore urged participants to contribute intensively to the forum as it was going to inform the outcome of the guidelines.
Maria Pilas Palmero, the head of Governance Section, in the European Union, mentioned that the EU was committed to supporting interventions that focussed on strengthening civil society organisations at the grassroots level to engage effectively with local government authorities in activities addressing priorities of national strategies.
She indicated that there has been on-going deliberation across the world on the role of CSOs by the European Union and indicated that the local authorities have been selected to be the pillar for global development.
Mrs Palmero said that in developing the Ghanaian intervention, objectives should be specific, focused and prioritized to ensure that CSOs held local government authorities accountable by providing quality services to the citizenry, adding that the meeting was to discuss and define priorities and propose the way forward.
By Emelia Ennin Abbey
