Citizens' participation, key to transparent governance – CDD

Effective participation of citizens in the local governance process has been identified to be a key component to ensuring transparent and accountable governance.

To achieve this, citizens must be adequately empowered with information and knowledge on the decentralization process to whip up their interest to participate and demand transparent and accountable governance from their leaders.

Mr Mutaru Muminu, Research and Programme Officer of the Center for Democratic Development (CDD), made this known in Wa during a day’s training and capacity building workshop on the theme: “Social Accountability in Decentralization in Ghana”.

He said the lack of knowledge in the local government structures was the major contributor to citizen’s less participation in local governance, adding that this could be addressed through information sharing and dissemination.

Mr Muminu said Ghana was still battling with issues of responsiveness and accountability according to a study by the CDD.

This is in spite of the existence of a comprehensive structure of accountability established by the 1992 Constitution, he said.

“The media, instead of being seen as a partner for development, politicians, heads of decentralized departments and others rather see them as people who want to expose wrong doings, hence, their desire to keep information to their chest rather than give it out,” he said.

Mr Muminu said perhaps that might be the reason why succeeding governments were refusing to pass the freedom to information bill which had been pending for more than a decade now.

The workshop, which was organized by CDD with funding from the European Union, was attended by personnel from three organizations: the National Commission for Civic Education, the Information Services Department and the media.

The objective is to build the capacities of personnel to enable them to transfer the knowledge acquired through their various mediums to the general public to help increase their participation in local governance.

Target groups for the project include traditional authorities, the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies, marginalized groups, persons with disabilities, and women and youth groups at the grassroots.