Commitment to development challenges yielding positive results- NAPRM

Wechau(UWR), Oct.18, GNA - The National African Peer Review Mechanism - Governing Council's (NAPRM-GC) draft report on Wa West District in the Upper West Region, has indicated that government's commitment to address the development challenges of the district were showing positive results. There have been remarkable improvements in the education and health sectors, following the implementation of the Capitation Grant and School Feeding Programme, as well as the National Health Insurance Scheme. The report said government through the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) has undertaken infrastructural development in the primary, secondary, polytechnics and universities, resulting in some significant increase in school enrolment and improve in the environment for teaching and learning.

At a Validation Workshop to overview the District Oversight Committee's (DOC) Monitoring and Evaluation activities of the status of implementation of government's policies at Wechau on Saturday, the report revealed that despite improvement in the health sector, infant and maternal mortality rates were still high in the area.

Concerning corruption, the report noted that government's main focus had been strengthening the legal and regulatory frameworks, as well as the institutions mandated by the framework to fight against corruption. This is evidenced by the passage of laws such as the Financial Administration Act, the Internal Audit Agency Act and the Public Procurement Act. Institutions such as the Public Procurement Authority, Entity Tender Committees, Appeal and Complaints Committees, Review Boards, and Internal Audit Units have been established to operationalise the laws. The report appreciated civil society groups, including the media which have been vocal and resourceful in the fight against corruption and called for a more collaborative effort in minimizing the incidence of corruption in the country.

The report also commended government for its commitment to the decentralisation process by increasing the District Assemblies Common Fund from five percent to seven and half percent and the creation of more districts to facilitate better governance and acceleration of the socio-economic development of the communities.

Significant progress has also been made in the area of political decentralisation from the district to the sub-district levels. The report however noted that there was still centralization of authority at the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assembly levels such that the sub-district structures were marginalised.

Progress in the areas of administrative, fiscal and service decentralisation has not been encouraging, the report indicated, and called for effective and operational fiscal decentralisation framework at the district level.

The DOC report gave the assurance that government was creating enabling environment for the growth and development of the private sector. In that regard, government was strengthening the regulatory environment for doing business to promote private sector led growth, through the reviewing of the functions of regulatory agencies to remove overlaps, scale down on the number of regulatory authorities and establish benchmarks for good practices.

"These measures, including increased credit to the private sector, are aimed at creating jobs and employments for the youth to complement the efforts of the National Youth Employment Programme", the reported explained. The report lauded government's initiatives and interventions, especially the establishment of the Northern Development Fund, now Savannah Accelerated Development Authority with a seed capital of 25 million Ghana Cedis.

In addition, government has also launched a 97.38 million Ghana cedi facility in partnership with African Development Fund to undertake the Northern Rural Growth Programme which covers 32 districts of Northern Ghana. The report called for effective monitoring to ensure that the desire results were achieved from these initiatives and policies. 18 Oct. 09