CDD-Ghana, UNICEF Call on Gov’t to Adopt District League Table for Budgeting, Others

Prof Henry Kwasi Prempeh,   Executive Director of Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana)

Accra, Ghana, August 3, 2019//-Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), a leading democratic and governance think-tank in Ghana and beyond, and UNICEF Ghana have called on the government to adopt the annual District League Table (DLT) for budgeting and programme reviews to help the country achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The SDGs or Global Goals for Sustainable Development are a collection of 17 global goals set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015.

The SDGs are part of Resolution 70/1 of the United Nations General Assembly: “Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” That has been shortened to “2030 Agenda.”

The goals are broad and interdependent, yet each has a separate list of targets to achieve. Achieving all 169 targets would signal accomplishing all 17 goals. The SDGs cover social and economic development issues including povertyhungerhealtheducationglobal warminggender equalitywater, sanitationenergyurbanizationenvironment and social justice.

The two organizations-CDD-Ghana and UNICEF Ghana which introduced the annual DLT rankings, made the call at a half-day stakeholders’ forum aimed at engendering responsiveness through budget guidelines and Annual Progress Reports in Accra recently.

The forum formed part of targeted national level engagements on the DLT findings following the launch of the 2018/2019 DLT II report in June 2019.

Highlighting the DLT II and implications for resource allocation and monitoring/reporting frameworks, a senior official of UNICEF Ghana, Charles Doradosi was confident that the DLT could help improve the lots of the people in the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in the country.

He reiterated: “No one should be marginalized in terms of social service provisions because of the district in which he or she lives”.

On his part, the Deputy Executive Director of CDD- Ghana, Dr. Franklin Oduro admonished the MMDAs to see the league table as a tool for inclusive development.

He explained that the DLT provides a tool for accountability and supports citizens’ access to information and knowledge on rights on development in their assemblies.

The DLT also aims at helping government better understand and monitor development across the country, according to him.

Some members of the Parliamentary Select Committees of Local Government and Rural Development, Poverty Reduction, and Gender and Children who attended the forum, called on the MMDAs to pay attention to the District League Table.

Results released from the 2018/2019 District League Table II Report indicated that Asante Akim North Municipal, a little-known District in the Ashanti Region was ranked first, while the District with the lowest ranking was Asokore Mampong Municipal, in the same Ashanti Region.

In the regional ranking, Greater Accra was at the top, whereas Eastern Region carried the bottom, well below the positions of traditionally “poor” like Upper East and Upper West regions.

Produced by CDD-Ghana and UNICEF Ghana, the District League Table (DLT) ranks the level of development in each of Ghana’s 216 Districts, in the bid to strength social accountability between the state and its citizens for development.

Produced annually with the support of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD) and the Office of the Head of Local Government Service., it ranks them in terms of their delivery in six key sectors: health, education, sanitation, water, security and governance.

African Eye Report

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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