The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration with Centre for Democratic Development (CDD)-Ghana and the Ministry of Local Governance and Rural Development (MLGRD will on Tuesday, June 18 launch 2018 District League Table Report (DLT).

The DLT ranks the districts in terms of their delivery across six key public service indicators such as health, education, security, water, sanitation and governance, and the rankings are done annually, based on the information and provided from the districts themselves.

Madam Yoshimi Nishino, Chief of Social Policy and Evidence at the UNICEF Ghana, speaking at a pre-media briefing ahead of the launch said DLT serves as a tool to strengthen social accountability in Ghana’s developmental efforts.

She noted that the report creates awareness among policymakers to further engage citizens to enhance service delivery at their respective areas.

Madam Nishino said the DLT used indicators that measured social development especially around service delivery, and started with six indicators and six sectors, however, over years there had been reviews.

She explained that for 2018 report had seen major reviews, which included the methodology whilst a new like the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, which would focus on birth registration in the country.

Madam Nishino said with regards to the new indicators; they added an enrollment to the education sector to know how many children go to school apart from the learning outcomes of these children.

“Again in the area of Water, previously, we had rural water coverage as an indicator but now had urban water added to the indicators “, she said.

Mr Mohammed Awal, a Research Analyst at CDD-Ghana, noted that there was a conscious effort to work with parliament at least to see to what extent the recommendations from the report could enhance their capacity and shape policies.

He said at the national level, much was not seen as a result of the DLT findings, however, stakeholders have witnessed innovative ways at the district level and actions have been taken to address issues.

The Research Analyst underscored the need to have a lot more changes at the centre, based on the evidence generated, identifying issues and pointing to variations and inequalities they had seen to enable resource allocations to be aligned with the evidence.