Call on parliament to monitor budget

Tamale, Nov. 25, GNA - Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in the Northern Region have called on the government, parliament and CSOs to monitor the 2007 budget to ensure that development targets were achieved.

They said: "Budget monitoring, policy monitoring, monitoring the budget chain, monitoring public expenditure and performance monitoring should be taken seriously to ensure that the laws are not flouted to enable the country to achieve results".

"This they could do by using previous budget performance to help analyse current budget targets set."

These were contained in a report issued in Tamale on Thursday after a one-day workshop for CBOs and non-governmental organisations to review and analyse the main components of the budget. The report also called on the Audit Service to audit public accounts regularly and make its reports available to parliament. The Institute for Policy Alternative (IPA), a Tamale-based NGO, organised the workshop.

The workshop noted that budgets had always been silent on vulnerable groups such as subsistence farmers, the physically challenged, mentally retarded persons and widows.

The participants said even though 20 billion cedis had been allocated for interventions on extreme poverty groups in the budget, these were considered as "very broad".

They referred to the National Youth Employment Programme and said it was silent on vulnerable groups like women, street children, mentally ill and physically challenged persons.