GENERAL

Local Governance Expert calls for rebranding of assemblies
A Local Governance Expert, Dr Eric Oduro-Osae, has urged the newly created assemblies to rebrand themselves appropriately and understand their areas of jurisdiction to facilitate revenue mobilisation.

Date Created : 1/25/2019 7:07:03 AM : Story Author : GNA


Dr Oduro-Osae, who is also the Dean of Studies and Research at the Institute of Local Government Studies, entreated the new assemblies to have a vision and mission that would guide their development agenda.

In this regard, he said there was the need for the assemblies to clearly set their corporate governance structures including the erection of signposts at vantage points, registration of a logo and provision of identity cards to assembly members, as well as the creation of social media platforms to facilitate easy interaction with the people and engender feedback.

Dr Oduro-Osae gave the advice at a capacity-building workshop for assembly members of the newly created metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) in the Greater Accra Region, on Thursday.

The workshop was organised by the Centre for Local Governance Advocacy (CLGA), a Non-Governmental Organisation, in collaboration with the Inter-Ministerial Coordinating Committee on Decentralisation (IMCod).

It discussed issues pertaining to demarcation of boundaries of the new assemblies, changes in assembly composition and corporate status, formation and constitution of sub-committees and budget and asset disaggregation.

It is also intended to empower the assembly members to provide the needed leadership and development requirement at the new assemblies.

Dr Oduro-Osae said it was prudent for the assembly members, especially the new ones, to understand the meeting procedures and committee system, revenue profiling and mobilisation as well as localising by-laws and procurement processes for efficient service delivery.

“As a new assembly you need to make yourself popular among the people so that they will get to know and understand your operations, boundaries, who to contact for payment of levies and other statutory fees for purposes of accountability,” he said.

Institutionalising those processes would help the people to appreciate the areas of development and contribute their quota towards development, he said.

“Assembly members must understand their calling and deliver to the expectation of the people and also meet their electorate before and after assembly meetings to brief them, which will show that you’re really representing them,” Dr Oduro-Osae advised.

Madam Gladys Naadu Tetteh, the Deputy Executive Director of CGLA, said her Organisation started the capacity-building workshops for the assembly members last year, and zoned the Greater Accra Region into two.

She said it had completed the training programme for the zone one, which took the resource persons and facilitators to Ashanti and Eastern regions.

Madam Tetteh said it, therefore, commenced the zone two training this year to expose them to challenges and emerging issues pertaining to the creation of the assemblies, especially the local Governance Act, so that members would deliver to the expectation of the electorate.

“Having been an elected assembly member for eight years and a presiding member for four years, I know what it takes to put politics aside and push your district forward,” she said.

“If they don’t leave their political affiliation behind them and think about their communities’ development, we will not get anywhere and ultimately, the community will lose and posterity will judge them.”

“Therefore they should leave their political colours behind and go in with free heart thinking about the communities’ development.”

Madam Tetteh encouraged them to push their communities’ aspirations forward since that was the purpose for setting them up to engender development.

President Akufo-Addo, in 2017, issued a Legislative Instrument, which created additional 38 new assemblies across the country to bring development to the doorsteps of the people.