‘CSOs must build capacity to hold assemblies accountable’

Civic societies Organizations (CSOs)have been advised to acquire knowledge and build capacity to understand the workings of metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies to ensure social accountability.

Ms Sarah Dedei Agbey, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SNV-Ghana, gave the advice at a social/public expenditure and accountability forum held at Adentan on Thursday.

The forum, the second to be held for stakeholders in the Adentan Municipal Assembly (AdMA), aims at educating the participants to understand the concepts of development and budgetary planning.

It was organised by Intervention Forum (IF), a Non-governmental Organisation (NGO) and local capacity builder for the SPEFA, in collaboration with SNV-Ghana (Netherlands Development Organisation) under the Local Government Capacity Support Project.

“For Ghana to develop and be strong, we all need to help. Accountability can’t work if you don’t have knowledge,” Ms Agbey said.

In a presentation on Development Planning, she said it was necessary for the participants to understand the public finance management system.

This, she said, would assist them to acquire knowledge and help them to monitor the activities of the AdMA as well as to improve on their own lives.

With regard to the process of formulating policies, projects and progrmames, Ms Agbey said civic engagement was particularly useful to ensure that the limited resources of government were properly allocated to issues and problems that were relevant to the citizens.

Government alone, she noted, could not provide all the funds for the assemblies’ activities and programmes and, therefore, it was important for participants to look at possible ways of raising revenue through taxes and levies to fund their planned projects.

“Resources are limited; therefore, you need to plan and direct your resources towards your priority needs,” she said.

Mr Emmanuel Tettey, Senior Consultant to SNV-Ghana, who spoke on the MMDA Budgeting Cycle, enlightened participants on the public financial management legal and regulatory framework, financial management cycle, and the budgeting cycle, among other things.

He said some external factors could affect planned projects and programmes for the AdMA’s annual action plans, leading to hiccups in implementation, hence the need to subject them to reviews to deal with priority issues.

Ms Nora Ollennu, CEO of Intervention Forum, and focal person for Adentan District Citizen Monitoring Committee, said participatory budgeting referred to the mechanism and process through which citizens contributed to decisions made in the allocation of all or part of available public resources.

This, she said, included a range of approaches or social accountability mechanisms such as budget monitoring and analysis aimed at increasing efficiency in budget allocations; improve accountability and management; reduce social exclusion and poverty; and increase trust between citizens and government.

Mr Francis Chilly Agbeyibor, a former planning and research officer of the Ghana Commercial Bank, told the GNA that the presentations had been quite insightful, and suggested that it be held quarterly.

“I have some background in the private sector but now I am in a position to know how the public sector works. I believe this is part of the public private partnership and I think it is working very effectively,” he said.