REPORT ON TEERE LOCAL GOVERNMENT REGIONAL FORUM

• October 06, 2016,
• Venue Bolgatanga, Ghana.

TEERE in collaboration with a German based partner Robert Bosch Foundation has successfully piloted a local government forum at the community, district and regional level on the theme “Role of Citizens in Local Governance” .the first community pilot project on the TEERE Local Government Forum(TLGF) was held at Zorkor a community in the Bongo District whiles the district program was organized at the district capital, Bongo and the last pilot project on the TLGF took place in Bolgatanga the regional capital of Upper East.

The TLGF seeks to sensitize the citizenry on the need to actively get involved in local governance and the role they can play in ensuring a transparent and accountable bureaucratic democratic system. The forums brought together stakeholders derived from various institutions that matter in local governance.

Upper East Regional Minister, Hon. Albert Abongo delivering his speech

In the Welcome Address of the Upper East regional Minister, Hon. Albert Abongo, he indicated that the forum was important and would offer citizens in the region an opportunity to discuss local governance focusing on opportunities, challenges and the level of citizens’ participation at the local level.

He stated that Ghana has been practicing the local government system before independence through chiefs and local council .however, the current reformed local government system began in 1988 and several Acts have been enacted to facilitate its implementation in Act 462 (1993) and Act 656(2003).

According to him, it is a truism that most substructures were not functional and where they seems to be functioning lack the basic capacity. And as a measure to ensure that the operationalization of these sub-structures, local government service has mandated metropolitan, municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to ensure they are working.

Hon. Abongo said he was excited about the forum and urged all MMDAs to establish a good working relations with TEERE to strengthen citizens participation at the local level so that the feedback would be used to enhance development of communities, adding that as the country is in an election season, all citizens should endeavor to ensure a peaceful election before, during and after the elections in Ghana.
Click to to read full speech

After the welcome address from the Upper East Regional Minister, a Member of the TEERE Local government Forum Planning Committee, Madam Yvonne Wepala introduced the Moderator for the Forum. She introduced the Board Member of TEERE, Mr. Sagito Issaka who is a retired Civil Servant and a Local Government Expert as the Chairman for the forum.

Mr. Sagito in accepting responsibility to chair the forum asked for a collaborative effort from participants and stakeholders to stick to the issue onboard and respond objectively in order to make the forum a success without elements of partisan politicking.

The Acceptance and laid down guidelines for the forum presented by Mr. Sagito followed a background of TLGF by the CEO Prof. Avea Nsoh who said it was borne out of initial challenges especially in ensuring partnerships with institutions in local governance and the idea was to collaborate with institutions to provide some capacity building training for the Assemblies and organizations in local government and decentralization in general. However, this was not appropriate because they realized that merely providing capacity training could not achieve the goal to enhance decentralization.

The purpose of this TLGF he said was to generate interest in local governance and the decentralization reforms by involving citizens, practitioners and experts in local governance. And to achieve this objective, TEERE has instituted the four-tier TEERE local government forum (TLGF) at the lowest level (community) there is the community sensitization aimed at explaining the concepts to the citizenry and generating interest in the concept at that level.

He said the District TLGF enables congregation of citizens with particular attention to stakeholders groups in local government such as local government workers, women, the physically challenged, political parties, sub-structures of the assemblies, the Media, traditional religious and political authorities, trade unions, business associations, adding that the TLGF’s main strength is the ability to allow linkage from the local to the national level and its involvement of citizens. The TLGF advocates for the independence of local government institutions systems and structures hence, the TLGF was developed to address serious challenges of the decentralization programme.

CEO of TEERE Prof. Avea E. Nsoh

Prof. Avea Nsoh also explained further that the motivation for the TLGF is as a result of TEERE’s believe that people’s lives can be made better through a functioning local government system. And the two main brains behind the TLGF, Gerhard Lauth and himself have vested interest in local governance and have worked for several years to promote decentralization in Ghana and abroad since both of them no longer work in mainstream local government system, there was the need to find some other ways to assist the process in the country.

They have identified some weakness as observed earlier which they thought the TLGF could help address and moreover, they have failed to get the much expected support from some organizations to run capacity training for assemblies.

Full speech Prof. Avea Nsoh

According to TEERE, the TLGF concept was developed and shared with some colleagues as well as the local government service secretariat (LGSS), the national association of local government authorities (NALAG), regional Houses of Chiefs in both Upper East and West, some district assemblies as well as the regional coordinating councils of the two regions. These were the two regions for the pilot project and five assemblies were identified in both Upper East and West unfortunately, the needed support to run the project in selected districts and regions but the piloted project has been organized in Bongo and Bolgatanga and it is expected that these district and regional pilots would validate the concept and demonstrate its efficacy to prospective donors and partners.

Participants were expected to:
• Debate the local government and decentralization reforms and make proposals to ensure citizen participation.
• Provide some input to refine the concept.
• Facilitate the implementation of TLGF in the district and regional levels.
• Suggest ways by which to improve local government in the region.

Projecting into the future about the TLGF, Prof. Avea said the focus of TEERE was to improve the concept and to secure adequate funding to implement the project in the 216 MMDAs starting from the Upper West and East and in that regard, the MMDAs have a major role to play. Principal Advisor of TEERE, Mr. Gerhard Lauth, added that though it will become a rocky and long way, with sustainability it is worth to survive. Mr. Gerhard further pledged his support for TEERE as an Advisor on behalf of the Germany Senior Expert Service as it is necessary.

Regional Coordinating Director, Alhaji Abu-Bakr in his speech indicated that the concept of decentralization has shaped the contours of development thinking, administration and governance within the developed and developing countries noting that it was only in 1988 that the PNDC government under its slogan “power to the people’’ that real decentralization started in Ghana and it was this grassroots democracy that had matured into this current local government system.




According to him, the desire for decentralization is strong throughout the world because of its link to the concept of solidarity, which holds that certain decisions should be taken at the most appropriate level of government and establishes a presumption that this level would be the lowest available.

He stressed with reference to the Avoade, 2002; 10-12 that decentralization cures the affliction of size by ensuring that as many people as possible become stakeholders and participants in state power and prosperity.by creating smaller units, decentralization increases the frequency and velocity of political of political interchange and exchange between government and citizens as well as among citizens. I therefore sets in motion a dynamic interactive political process in an environment that would have been dominated by anguished political spectators. The political people transformed into critical mass actors and minimize political apathy because government gets close to the ignored. It therefore has the intended effect of mobilizing an otherwise apathetic population.

Alhaji Abu-Bakr noted that decentralization can thus be seen as a form of popular participation that one of the principal objectives of the decentralized local government is increased people’s participation in matters that directly affect their welfare. Decentralization also empowers the people to participate in decision making, programme planning and execution, adding that it also provides easy access to information by which the government and governed both have access to each other and makes government more accountable to the people(LGID,1996:2) The regional coordinating director also used the opportunity to highlight on some of the opportunities and challenges in the Upper East Region. Below are the bulleted opportunities and challenges:

Opportunities

• Election of representatives by the citizenry to take decisions on their behalf and non performing representatives are voted out
• Action plans of Assemblies taken from the community levels.
• Community members invited for budgetary hearings and informed on projects and programmes to be executed.
• Invitation to fix fee fixing and levies per any programme.
• Technical and professionals posted to advice political leadership in taking decisions
• Assemblies have the mandate to generate resources and even link up with other neighboring assemblies to undertake joint ventures that would benefit them

Challenges

• Dependency on non-lucrative ventures making it hard for them to collect taxes and tolls from the few undeveloped markets
• Inability to tap natural resources in various districts to the fullest and no opportunity for preservation
• Inadequate utilization of large rocks deposit for construction industry
• No or less concentration on the craft industry
• Poor attention on agriculture especially rice production in the Kassena-Nakana and Builsa areas
• Guinea fowl production and other livestock potentials not exploited to the fullest

Addressing the issue of citizen participation in local governance, Mr Abu-Bakr explained that the local government Act, Act 480 and the 1992 constitution are very clear about citizen participation in local government. But added that it was not enough because it occurs every four years and that the legislations add some of the participatory instruments in budget hearing and participation in the planning processes.

He cited Town Hall Meetings where duty bearers account to the citizens how resources received on their behalf are utilized and again, Assembly Members by law are expected to meet their electorates before and after each assembly meeting. They are therefore expected to collate views of their electorates which would be articulated at these meetings

He however lamented that Assembly members fail to conduct periodic meetings and the sub-structures that are expected to serve as the grassroots participatory bodies for the citizenry are generally non -functional. Meanwhile, the Assembly system seems not to have integrated the traditional systems into their programmes. And these institutions, structures, values and norms have existed over the centuries and from the onslaught of colonialism failed to destroy them. Meanwhile, the early African Leaders failed to disband those whiles the indigenous values are therefore missing in the decentralization agenda. The issue of the Assemblies not undertaking research though they have been mandated by Act 462 to do so in areas of potentials and challenges that would inform them of the way forward.

He concluded by stating that no individual of group could be blamed for the current state of affairs because it is a systematic problem which has led to the miserable conditions that country has found itself which needs Think Tanks not necessarily sophisticated brains to start the process. The Regional Coordinating Council according to Mr. Abu-bakr could be a facilitating body in the process with civil society, Assemblies and all relevant citizens who are concerned about the growth and development of the region.

RCD, Alhaji Abu-Bakr speech

The Chairman, Mr. Sagito thanked the RCD for an in-depth presentation on the topic of citizen participation in the local governance structure and also made known the modalities of the open forum and encouraged that discerning views should be welcomed and not attacked.
After presentations from various stakeholders present at the TLGF, participants were also given the opportunity to contribute their views towards the change in the local government levels. The views and follow ups have been tabulated in the table below according to the concerns raised from various stakeholders.

CONCERNS

• Legal composition of the Assemblies is the major problem.
• Revenue from central government as the main tool of control.
• Revenue mobilization amongst citizens is a difficulty because the MMDAs do not make their expenditure available to the citizenry. Hence he is of the view that the lack of engagement of the people as to how their revenues are spent is the hindering factor to revenue collection.
• Citizenry does not appreciate the relevance of decentralization because all aspects of their lives are centralized since everything including documentations such as birth certificate, land registration etc are all sent to Accra to be done.
• Too much partisan politics in assembly business
• Educational system shrinking especially at the Basic
• Inaccessibility of some MMDAs to their citizens
• Poor planning of towns and communities

WAY FORWARD

• Advocate for the direct elections of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives to ensure they are directly accountable to their electorates but not the central appointing power.
• Revival of the town hall council meetings could be a very workable platform for citizens to engage their leaders.
• Citizenry would be given the opportunity to elect their MMDAs out of the three successfully vetted nominees. This is to give the people some room to play an active part in electing their leaders instead of imposition from the central government.
• Avoid over politicization of assemble development
• Poor collaboration with various MMDAs from the regional and central point of local governance in Ghana.
• Matters relating to local governance should not be overly politicized
• Authorities should tighten supervision on teachers in various schools
• Assemblies doors should be opened to every citizen to raised their concerns
• MMDAs should ensure that the Assembly by-laws are fully enforced to prevent future disasters

The Chairman, Mr. Sagito reiterated that the discussion sought to bring out to the people the need to be roped into participating in governance and expressed gratitude for the massive participation on the forum in ensuring that there is transparency from their MMDAs adding that Accountability cannot be underestimated as one of the things the constituents are seeking for. He finally reiterated that TEERE’s presence was for change and a paradigm shift from old excluded ways of local governance.
CEO of TEERE, Prof. Avea Nsoh in his closing remarks expressed gratitude to participants for their responsive participation in the TLGF piloted project and assured that TEERE would continue to bring governance to the doorsteps of the ordinary citizens. He also used the opportunity to congratulate the TLGF 9 member organizing and planning team for making the program a success.

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