The technocrats drawn from the Bolgatanga Municipal, Kassena-Nankana Municipal, Bawku Municipal, Bongo, Bawku West, Nabdam and Talensi Districts included Coordinating Directors, Planners, Budget Officer and Head of departments including Directors of Agriculture.

The two-day training which was held under the theme: “Social Accountability and the Use of Public Financial Management Templates”, was aimed at strengthening the technical capacity of government officials to be more accountable to citizens.

It was organized by the Northern Ghana Governance Activity (NGGA), through the U.S. Government’s Feed the Future Initiative in collaboration with the Office of Head of Local Government Service (OHLGS) with funding support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Mr Chrys Pul, the Governance and Advocacy Specialist of the NGGA, said the training forms part of the five-year NGGA project being implemented by a consortium of non profit organizations including Action Aid Ghana, SEND-Ghana and WANEP-Ghana, spearheaded by CARE International.

He said the goal of the NGGA is to strengthen responsive governance for improved agriculture development in the country through four key areas including the strengthening of institutional capacity for effective coordination and integration of key actors in decentralized agricultural development in Ghana.

The Governance and Advocacy Specialist said as part of the implementation stages of the project, his outfit signed a collaborative Memorandum of Understanding with the Office of the Head of Local Government Service in May this year, to strengthen the capacity of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) and the Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs) of the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions.

He said the training which was organized concurrently in the three regions was to help government increase the space for inclusive agricultural governance by providing timely and right information to citizens and enhance citizen-led planning, budgeting, implementation, performance monitoring and expenditure tracking process.

“As part of the technical support, NGGA leveraged on the legal mandate and expertise of OHLGS to organize a 2-day capacity strengthening training on social accountability for about 350 local government officials responsible for local governance and provided them with industry leading knowledge, skills and tools’’, he said.

Mr Elvis Otoo, the Consultant of Social Accountability, who facilitated the training, took the stakeholders through the Social Accountability and the Use of Public Financial Management Templates adding that one of the major challenges facing the duty bearers of the Assembly was how to communicate effectively to the citizenry.

He urged the participants at the event to engage the citizens through the various platforms such as planning, budgeting, procurement, financial reporting by regularly organizing town hall meeting for public hearings amongst others.