By Mildred Siabi-Mensah/Faustina Mensah
Takoradi, Aug. 15, GNA – The Infrastructure Transparency Initiative (CoST) District Citizen Monitoring Teams have conducted independent social audits on 14 projects in eight districts of the Western Region, where they discovered that disability-friendly access remained a major issue in public infrastructure delivery.
This highlights the need for the assemblies to pay critical attention to the needs of marginalised groups in meeting the basic needs of the people.
The independent audit was to assess the quality and overall impact of such projects on the beneficiary communities.
The monitored projects primarily focused on health and education infrastructure.
At a dissemination event in Takoradi, the eight monitoring teams presented their social audit findings to participants, including traditional leaders, officials from the Western Regional Coordinating Council and the eight districts, the CoST Multi-Stakeholder Group, civil society representatives, and other identifiable groups.
The monitoring teams are composed of diverse stakeholders, including traditional leaders, women and youth groups, persons with disability, media personnel, the NCCE, and representatives from civil society organizations, ensuring broad participation and inclusivity.
Mr Isaac Aidoo, the CoST Sekondi-Takoradi Manager, said the monitoring teams were playing significant roles in ensuring that the CoST programme had a strong footprint at the local level, strengthening transparency and accountability in local infrastructure governance.
The teams were formed by the CoST Sekondi-Takoradi Foundation to empower district-level actors to take an active role in monitoring infrastructure projects within their districts.
The Foundation is the local chapter of CoST International, a leading global initiative that operates in 19 countries to implement transparency and accountability reforms within the public infrastructure sector.
The social audits were conducted following eight district-level training and capacity-building sessions on Ghana’s legal framework for disclosing information on public projects and contracts, social accountability tools, and the CoST approach to infrastructure transparency.
By empowering local communities to actively participate in monitoring public infrastructure initiatives, the Chapter aims to foster a culture of social accountability at the grassroots level, promoting effective infrastructure delivery that improves upon the lives of communities
Mr Aziz Mahmoud, the CoST Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Officer, stated that the primary purpose of forming the monitoring teams was to empower local champions at the district level to actively participate in monitoring ongoing and completed infrastructure projects using social accountability tools.
”When it comes to social auditing, constructive engagement between the monitor and the project owner is key, and the name of the game is evidence. This is the surest way to ensure reforms are made in the delivery of public infrastructure,” he said and urged the teams to strengthen collaboration with the various assemblies in that endeavour.
He advised them to follow up with the districts on their audit recommendations.
Mr Eugene Ofori-Atta, the Multi-Stakeholder Group Chairperson, expressed his gratitude to the teams for taking up the responsibility to ensure better project outcomes.
He emphasised that the practice of holding decision-makers to account was enshrined in the 1992 Constitution and encouraged individuals and communities to actively participate in providing oversight in the delivery of publicly funded infrastructure projects within their districts.
The teams operated in eight CoST participating districts in the Western Region: Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly, Effia-Kwesimintsim, Nzema East, Ahanta West, and Tarkwa-Nsuaem municipal assemblies, and Mpohor, Wassa East, and Shama district assemblies.
GNA