NCCE Holds Workshop for Fifty field Officers

Accra, Nov. 24, GNA - The National Commission on Civic Education has held a two-day workshop for 50 field officers drawn from the regional and districts offices of the Commission to enable them to conduct a study on Citizens Participation in Local Governance. The study would provide the baseline data on which improvements in citizens' participation could be measured at the end of NCCE Social Audit Programme embarked on last two years.

Opening the workshop, Mrs Augustina Akosua Akumanyi, Deputy Chairperson in Charge of Programmes of the Commission said the field officers would undertake the research to ascertain the effectiveness of the social auditing, which is to ensure that public officers in charge of social affairs rendered proper accounts to the people. =93Social auditing is empowering the ordinary man and woman in the community to take ownership of the district assemblies and identify themselves with the administration of their communities,=94 she said. Besides social auditing also ensures that while the Assembles were being asked to inform the citizens on their performance, the citizens also perform their tax obligations.

Mrs Akumanyi said it was heartening that some District Chief Executives had embraced the Social Auditing project because of the opportunity it provided them to explain government policies and programmes to the people.

She said Social Auditing was in the interest of sustaining democracy and it was the responsibility of the Commission to educate the citizens on all issues that brought peace and development. Mrs Akumanyi said social auditing calls for transparency and quells suspicions and rumours of corruption a tendency which had the potential to threaten the peace in the country.

Mrs Getrude Zakaria-Ali, the Director of Research, NCCE, who explained the methodology of the exercise to the participants said the study was not to assess social auditing but rather how it had impacted on local governance in the country.

Mrs Fanny Kumah, Director in charge of Literature and Material Development of the Commission, who chaired the session asked the field officers to be serious with the programme as it would help them to report accurately for a final document of the project.