Thus, against the backdrop of the ever growing demand for accountability, the Institute of Local Government Studies (ILGS) organised a work shop to train Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), civil society organisations (CSOs), traditional leaders and opinion leaders on Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS).
PETS is a tool used to track the flow of public resources from the highest level of government to frontline service providers and beneficiaries in order to identify differences between the official and actual allocations and to determine the extent to which resources reach service providers and users.
Mr Edward Aboagye, Facilitator of the workshop, said both the public and officials at the local level deserve to know about the flow of resources, such as funding, from government to the frontline services providers. This is to help identify whether the resource was used for its intended purpose and if it reached the target group on whose behalf the project was initiated.
Using the funding of school feeding as example on how to track the flow, Mr Aboagye stated that the money was first realised from the Finance Ministry, then to the Education Ministry and it is then forwarded to Ghana Education Service.
The GES service will then share the money to the various districts education directorates, which in turn allocates the money to the individual schools for the feeding the students. He said knowing how the system works will enable the general public to trace the points where delays and leakages occur.
He said it was important for the CSOs and the general public to know the budget cycle of government in order to raise red flags when they see discrepancies in policies, funding and implementation at the local level to ensure accountability of government officials as well as service providers .
The participants were taking through the scope of PETS and how to use it to conduct social accountability monitoring.
Source; Public Agenda
By Latifa Carlos and Evelyn Addor
