Government makes tremendous gains in local government sector – President Mahama

President John Dramani Mahama on Tuesday said government has achieved tremendous gains towards strengthening the local government and decentralization sector since assumption of office in 2009.

He said the party in its 2008 manifesto promised to strengthen the sub-district structures, which has been fulfilled by the passage of Legislative Instrument 1967, changing the Unit Committee from a geographical to a functional concept.

The Unit Committees jurisdiction has now been made coterminous with that of the electoral area, and reduced the membership from 15 to five.

“We promised to hold a National Stakeholder Conference on Decentralization to drive the decentralization programme.

“We have done that, which culminated in the Decentralization Policy Framework and the National Decentralization Action Plan, which were launched in November 2010,” he said.

President Mahama outlined the NDC government’s achievement in the local government and decentralization sector in a speech read on his behalf, during the launch of Best Local Governance and Decentralization Journalist of the Year Award Scheme in Accra.

The Award scheme was also to whip-up the interest of Ghanaian journalists in the area, to raise awareness among the populace on issues about decentralization.

President Mahama said the promise to strengthen and provide logistics for Assembly Members had also been kept by the provision of over 9000 motor bikes and 170 four wheel station wagons to all Assembly Members and an orientation programme for all of them.

The President said the NDC government had also fulfilled the promise to publish the resources transferred from the central government to the district assemblies.

He said this publication in the newspapers has enhanced transparency and created means for more effective monitoring mechanism of the annual allocations to both district assemblies’ common fund and the district development facility, among several others.

Mr. Ben Hagan, Secretary to the Cabinet, who chaired the function, said the Award Scheme would further serve as a form of motivation to journalists in the country in their quest to educate and inform the public and highlight various efforts that were being made by stakeholders to achieve the objectives set out in the policy and the Action Plan.

Mr. Blight Blewu, General Secretary of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), congratulated the IMCC for the foresight and urged journalists to take advantage of the scheme to achieve the goal.

The Award Scheme was initiated by the Inter-Ministerial Coordinating Committee on Decentralization (IMCC) to encourage and acknowledge Ghanaian journalists to report on issues concerning decentralization and local governance in the country.

The scheme, “Best Journalist in Local Governance and Decentralization Reporting” would be an annual event incorporated into the GJA annual awards and would follow the laid down policy and procedure of the GJA.

For the first year, the winner would receive a television set, a laptop, an internet modem and a cash prize of GHC 2,000, which would be reviewed periodically.

The IMCC with membership from the ministries of local government and rural development; food and agriculture; health; education, justice and attorney general, among others, was composed by government to pursue the agenda of the new decentralization policy and framework and the new national decentralization action plan launched in November, 2010.

The policy sought, among other things, to provide conceptual clarity on what decentralization means within Ghanaian context.

It also provided guidelines on the concepts of local level democracy and development.