Promote citizens participation in your activities - Assemblies urged

Ms Lily Fati Soale, Head of the Social Accountability Unit at the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, has reiterated the need for Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to reach out further to the people to promote citizen participation in their activities.

She urged the MMDAs to do more by engaging their citizens through holding town hall meetings and community public hearings which is been encouraged by government as the best way to reach the citizenry.

She was speaking at a dissemination workshop for Coordinating Directors, Planning Officers and the Senior Citizens of MMDAs in the Greater Accra, Western, Eastern, Central and the Volta Regions in at Dodowa in the Greater Accra Region.

The workshop was organized by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development under its Local Government Capacity Support Project (LGCSP).

The workshop was to present findings of Citizens Perception Survey conducted under the LGCSP for the past five years to assess citizens’ appreciation and understanding of delivery of projects by 46 MMDAs in the country.

It revealed that the assemblies’ engagement of citizens in the delivery of projects has improved compared to five years ago when the project began adding that there is the need to find more innovative ways to reach more people.

She advised the MMDAs to employ a wide approach in engaging citizens to meetings to ensure that majority of them were targeted to promote participation.

Ms Soale also called on assemblies to ensure that people, who manned their client service units, were properly trained to understand the role of the assemblies.

The citizens lauded the project for helping to bridge the gap between the various assemblies and the citizenry leading to improved citizen participation in the activities of the assemblies.

The five-year project, which will end this year, supported the 46 assemblies in the delivery of improved infrastructure in the areas of health, education, sanitation amongst others through the Urban Development Grants.