By Lawrencia Akoto Frempong
Tema, April 19, GNA – The Planning Directorate of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) has engaged stakeholders in the evaluation, planning, and preparation of the medium-term development plan for the metropolis.
The Assembly, which is a planning authority, ensures that every four years it prepares the medium-term development plan that seeks to guide it in developing the metropolis.
Mr Samuel Larweh, the Tema Metro Planning Officer, told the Ghana News Agency that the medium-term development plan was the blueprint for the development of the metropolis within the next four years, for engaging community stakeholders to get the needs assessment which was the current state of the communities.
Mr Larweh explained that the needs assessment served as the major input to the plan for the metropolis, adding that the situations within the metropolis form the basis for their interventions.
“When we do the needs assessment and we are able to get the needs, we try to get the aspirations of the community members, and together with them, we prioritise which ones come first based on certain criteria, such as how severe the issue is, how diverse the issues are or how beneficial or impactful the issue will be to the community members when the issue is solved,” he added.
He said technically, the Assembly often assessed and reviewed the implementation of the previous plan to identify the gaps and project the population within various communities, adding that based on that, it would be able to project the future needs.
“We do the technical review from available documentation, collect data from community members through engagement, and harmonise them to get the future needs of the community to formulate our goals, objectives, programmes of action or interventions that you want to implement within the next four years,” he said.
Mr Larweh explained that over the last four years, the Assembly had completed several projects, including the construction of a 12-unit classroom block at Tema Newtown and other school blocks within the communities, however, some of these projects were not sponsored from the Assembly’s internally generated fund.
He said once the Assembly had an intervention in their action plan, it sought funding from various companies and organisations to assist in its implementation.
Companies such as Ghana Gas, had helped the Assembly fund some school buildings, while the Coastal Development Authority (CODA), had seen to the reconstruction of the Community Nine market, the completion of a modern police station block at Tema Newtown, the renovation of several schools and hospitals, the construction of about seven modern institutional washrooms with insinuators, and waste sheds.
Additionally, the Assembly had paved a lot of lorry stations, including the Tema Newtown station, Kpotame, Community One number two lorry station and the yam market. Mr Larweh said.
He said TMA had also conducted maintenance works on most of the roads within the metropolis, revealing that it implemented about 73 per cent of the interventions in the 2022 to 2024 development plan and between 90 and 93 per cent of the annual activities as planned for the year.
Mr Larweh stated that while planning the preparation of the development plan for 2026 to 2029, the Assembly had an action plan being used for developing that of the 2025 document, which formed part of the previous medium-term plan.
He appealed to community members and institutions within the metropolis to answer a questionnaire on the company’s website and social media pages to help it gather the needed information for the medium-term development plan.
He said the Assembly’s doors were open for any suggestion and need that required its attention, and the plan was for the metropolis; therefore, it wanted to prepare a plan that would meet the needs of the people.
GNA
LS/CAA