By Bertha Badu-Agyei
Accra, June 17, GNA – The Atiwa West District Assembly in the Eastern region has held a maiden Town Hall Meeting at Kwabeng to account to the people as part of measures to deepen local governance, transparency and accountability.
The Town Hall meeting, which brought together stakeholders in the development of the area, was organized in partnership with Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA), a non-profit-organization, focused on Strengthening local governance.
Pursuant to the Local Government Act 936, the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies are mandated to organize Town Hall meetings at least twice in a year, to afford the local people the opportunity to engage the assembly officials on the publics financial management and service delivery outcomes.
Mr Paddy Amponsah Douglas, the District Chief Executive for the area, noted that projects executed by the Assembly during the period under review were mainly in the areas of education, health, agriculture, economic empowerment and infrastructural development.
He explained the importance of the meeting to transparency and accountability as citizens would have the chance to question their stewardship as well as demand accountability from the local government authority.
Mrs Nana Ama Nketia-Quaidoo, Director for Community-Driven Development (CDD) programmes of ACA, said her organization placed much premium on the stakeholders’ engagements such as the Town Hall meeting because it sought to promote accountability.
“These kind of community engagements promote accountability, builds trust, saves cost and ensures a well-informed decision-making process.”
She reminded the Assembly that it owed it as responsibility to make conscious effort to improve on existing structures that would allow the participation and involvement of the citizenry in every stage of development.
She noted that, recently their council meetings for chiefs in some districts had revealed serious communication and participatory gaps between the assemblies and the chiefs and called for pragmatic measures to rectify the anomaly.
Some of the issues raised by the citizens focused mainly on health and sanitation, revenue mobilization, effectiveness of the National Health Insurance Scheme, drug peddling in the area and improvement in educational standards, among others.
GNA