The decentralization policy is to empower the people at the local and grassroots level to participate in governance and to ensure the sustenance of true democracy in the country, Mr James Kwabena Appiah-Awuah, Nkoranza District Chief Executive has said.
He was addressing about 35 leaders of Donkro-Nkwanta Area Council in the District at a four-day training on Rural Development Projects.
The programme is aimed at educating the leaders on their roles and responsibilities towards the development of their communities.
He emphasized that the development of any area depended on the efforts of the people themselves who should decide their priority needs to enable the government and the district assembly to support them.
The DCE called on Assembly members, Unit Committees, Area and Town councils to lead the people to initiate self-help development projects and to win the support and assistance of the government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Mr Appiah-Awuah urged the people to honour their tax obligations and to mobilise enough revenue to enable the District Assembly to carry out development programmes to help improve the living standards of the people.
Mr Bernard Agyemang-Duah of the Department of Planning of the Kwame
Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, who led the facilitators at the workshop said Community Based Rural Development Projects were long term projects that would bring a remarkable change and improvement in the lives of the people.
Under the Project, beneficiary communities in Nkoranza would be provided with bore holes, access roads to farm settlements and agricultural implements such as tricycles, power tillers, bicycles, while farming groups would also receive credit facilities.
Mr Agyemang-Duah said the project would help in reducing poverty among the people and advised community leaders and participants at the workshop to organise the people into identifiable groups so they could save with the banks and enjoy loans to expand their activities.
Mr Collins Ofosu, Assembly Member for Donkro Nkwanta commended the management of the Project for the workshop and called for a closer working relationship among unit committees, traditional authorities and assembly members.