NGO to monitor government's development initiatives in Northern Ghana

Wa, Aug. 5, GNA - SEND Ghana, a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) on Wednesday said it would monitor the implementation of the Northern Development Fund (NDF) and the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) to ensure that the poor benefited. It said this was in line with its mandate of promoting good governance practices of transparency, equity and citizen's participation in local governance.

The organization made this known in the January-March issue of its "HIPC Watch Upgrade," a quarterly publication, which reviews activities of the Organization in its operational areas of the country. Areas of interest to be covered in the monitoring would include the size of the remittances to the NDF and the SADA, equity in fund disbursement, beneficiaries including the number of women and people with disabilities, and amount of investments in health and education sectors.

It said the organization, which had been monitoring how resources from the HIPC fund and School Feeding Programme were being managed in the Northern, Upper East and West Regions, believed it would be playing its watch dog role effectively.

The Organization said one focal area of SADA should be to strengthen the role of NGOs and Civil Society groups in delivering needed livelihood services to the poor and vulnerable and reinforce their role in promoting the rights of the poor. It is the view of SEND Ghana that institutions working actively with poor people or representing them must be involved in all decisions affecting them.