News:
November 16, 2024
The Member of Parliament (MP) for Akim Oda and a Deputy Minister for Health, Alexander Akwasi Acquah is rallying support for Vice President and flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s manifesto promise to adequately resource assembly members to aid them perform their core mandates in their respective Electoral Areas.
According to the MP, Assembly members play a very crucial role as far as nation building is concerned, and as such, it was imperative for every central government to adequately resource them in order to ease their work at the grass-root level.
Mr Akwasi Acquah, who reiterated this huge promise made by the flag bearer of the NPP, when speaking at the 22nd biennial national delegates’ conference of the National Association of Local Authorities of Ghana (NALAG) in Sunyani, lauded the move by the Vice President, stressing that such a move by any government could only foster development and better the living conditions of the ordinary citizenry, especially, in the hinterlands and deprived communities.
He noted that the proposed policy could as well go a long way to develop human resource capacity at grass-root level by enabling the citizenry to formulate development policies for socio-economic growth.
Touching on other benefits, the MP further opined that the policy also aims at ensuring that every assembly member becomes directly responsible for the overall development of the electoral area, as well as, ensuring the preparation and submission of development plan and budgets to receive central government support.
He therefore charged local authorities to champion the course by supporting what he described as a novelty in Ghana’s local governance and decentralization system; an action plan which seeks to empower assembly members to become directly accountable for the level of development in their localities.
Considering the fact that decision-making and consensus building is very essential in any policy framework, the proposed policy, he explained, would also afford the average citizen an opportunity to have a direct say in the kind of projects that meet their demands and challenges of the people.
Meanwhile, the two-day conference which took place at the Sunyani Technical University in the Bono Region was under the theme: “Empowering Local Governance: A New Dawn for Electoral Area Development.”
Emmanuel Frimpong/Ghanamps.com