Tema, June 17, GNA – The Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) and the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to commence the implementation of the Partnerships for Municipal Innovation-Women in Local Leadership (PMI-WILL) project.
The five-year project, being funded by Global Affairs Canada, will be carried out in partnership with local government associations such as the National Association of Local Authorities of Ghana (NALAG).
The project is being implemented in five countries, namely Benin, Cambodia, Ghana, Sri Lanka, and Zambia.
In Ghana, five assemblies, including the TMA would benefit from the project. The others are Saboba, Atebubu-Amantin, Kwahu West, and Nandom Assemblies.
Mr Sherif Y. Amarh, the National Project Coordinator of the PMI-WILL, giving an overview of the project, said although women constituted about 52 per cent of Ghana’s population, there were only two women regional ministers and two women regional coordinating councils in the 16 regions.
Mr Amarh added that out of 216 district chief executives, only 39 were women, while out of about 9,000 Assembly members, 837 were women, noting that TMA had only one elected woman as Assembly member, a situation he described as worrying.
He said these statistics were evident that participation of women in leadership positions was not the best and fell short of the required minimum 40 per cent participation by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
He said the PMI-WILL project has two main objectives to increase women’s capacity to lead in local governance and to increase local government’s capacity to deliver inclusive and gender-responsive services.
Mr Amarh said to achieve the objectives, it would support the training of local government officials on gender-inclusive governance and gender-responsive service delivery, develop action plans to promote women’s participation in local government and implementation of priority activities such as training and mentoring for potential candidates, public awareness-raising on women’s participation in local governance, among others.
Other activities include strengthening the organizational capacity of networks or caucuses of elected female officials to promote inter-party solidarity and influence policy.
It would also engage with regional and international networks, addressing women in municipal governance, technical assistance to local governments to plan gender-responsive municipal services and support to implement pilot initiatives and many others.
Madam Mary Heather White, the Project Director PMI-WILL, said the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which she represented, has over 2,000 members, representing all municipalities in Canada and had been working for the past 35 years in solidarity with women inclusiveness in local governance leadership.
Madam White said there was the need to build the capacity and encourage women, especially the vulnerable ones such as women with disability to climb the leadership ladder, a vision they were fully committed to.
She indicated that the project would use peer to peer approach in which some municipalities in Canada would work hand-in-hand with the beneficiary assemblies to share best practices.
She urged men to support the move to get more women into local governance positions, saying “achieving parity can’t be done alone by women, we, therefore, welcome men to be allies of the dream.”
Mr Yohane Amarh Ashitey, the Tema Metropolitan Chief Executive, welcoming participants to the launch of the project, acknowledged the importance of having women in leadership saying that when men alone go into decision making, they tend to ignore the needs of women.
Mr Ashitey urged women to encourage themselves to take up leadership roles with the support of men, disclosing that it was to fulfil such aims that he led the TMA to apply for the project and put in all efforts to be selected among the five beneficiaries.
He gave the assurance that TMA was committed to promoting the issues of women and has therefore over the years devoted resources to achieve the same.
GNA