Government very responsive to citizens’ demands in the past 4 years – SEND-Ghana

A project organized by non-governmental organization, SEND-Ghana, has revealed that governments over the years have been very responsive to the demands of Ghanaians.

Senior Programme Officer for SEND-Ghana and Project Lead of the ‘Making the budget work for Ghana’ project, Harriet Nuamah-Agyemang posited that 24 out of the 39 top priorities of Ghanaian citizens SEND-Ghana worked on the past 4 years have been included in government’s budget.

“Apart from the fact that citizens are now demanding, government has also become more responsive to citizens’ demands and out of the 39 citizens’ priorities we presented over the 4 years, 61.5% (24 of them) have found space in the annual budget,” she disclosed.

Mrs Harriet Nuamah-Agyemang lauded government for implementing 50% of the said issues, calling on Ghanaians to be patient with government in terms of policy implementation.

“Out of the 24 issues, 50% is already been implemented so you should know that if government say they will do it, they will do. But sometimes it takes time because it requires money. All of us must be patient and wait but we must not just be patient but we must continue to push until we see that promise fulfilled,” she added.

Mrs Nuamah-Agyemang admitted that “We targeted 7 issues at the beginning of the project because we were not too sure government would listen. So we gave ourselves some minimal requirements and we have been overwhelmed by the response we have received from government.”

The ‘Making the budget work for Ghana’ project is a 4-year project under the Global Partnership for Social Accountability initiative, funded by the World Bank at a cost of $850,000. The project, which is an initiative of SEND-Ghana, sought to address governance challenges that affected the effective delivery of basic schools and health services.