The Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), have launched the 2017 Northern Region District League Table (DLT) in Tamale.
The DLT, which was introduced in 2014 and is released annually, is a social accountability tool that ranks the level of development or the progress of delivering key basic services in the country’s 216 districts.
The purpose of the pre-launch engagement was to share the outcomes and lessons learned from the three years of implementing the DLT, and to allow stakeholders to familiarize themselves with the objectives, process and outcomes of the initiative and to brief stakeholders on the 2017 DLT.
Speaking at the event, the Northern Regional Minister, Hon Salifu Saeed, underscored the importance of social accountability as a fundamental tool for effective governance and public service delivery, and hence tasked all MMDAs in the region to be more proactive and identify sectors where they have shortfalls, in terms of the provision of quality service delivery, and re-strategize to overcome those shortfalls.
He said MMDAs are development vehicles that are responsible to improve the socio-economic needs of citizens through the provision of quality service.
Mr. Salifu Saeed thus expressed gratitude to CDD-Ghana, UNICEF, and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), for the initiative.
He asked all the Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs), CDD-Ghana and UNICEF to ensure the needed co-operation and assistance to enable them develop the 2017 DLT report on time.
In her remarks, Madam Mable Amoako Atta from the Head of Local Government Service said, “the DLT is not out there to name and shame non-performing MMDAs, but to intensify the scrutiny of Ghana’s development, highlighting inequality across districts, and could also be used to better allocate resources to those individual districts that ranked low to be better supported.”
She therefore encouraged all MMDAs to take the DLT more seriously in order to improve service delivery.
On his part, Mr. Paul Osei-Kuffour, Programs Manager for CDD-Ghana-Tamale Office, who commended all stakeholders for their massive turnout for this year’s pre-launch, also indicated that, “there is the need to stimulate citizens’ engagement with duty bearers over issues affecting their lives, both in terms of access and quality of services, which had been identified in the development discourse as critical for promoting participation, transparency, responsiveness and accountability.”
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By: Latif Mahama/citifmonline.com/Ghana