A three-day workshop to equip the leadership of local governments with the requisite skills to competently handle the day-to-day events in the
assemblies opened, on Tuesday, at Takoradi.
Chief Executives of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies and their coordinating directors and officers responsible for Planning, Finance and Budget in the Western Region
are the beneficiaries.
Mr. Paul Evans Aidoo, Western Regional Minister, urged them to acquire the knowledge to meet the requirements of the Functional Organizational Assessment Tool (FOAT) to benefit from the District Development Fund.
He expressed regret that when the facility was introduced in 2007, most of the districts in the region did not meet the minimum requirements and lost the opportunity to access fund.
Mr Aidoo, whose speech was read for him, said the general assumption at the time was that it was a new exercise and so most people did not understand the contents and its benefits.
He, however, commended the leadership of the former Nzema East, the Juabeso and Bia district assemblies, which became the only beneficiaries.
He said the government, through the Local Government Service, was conducting the training workshops to enable the managers of the assemblies to improve upon their performances
and qualify for the facility in the next phase.
"I expect nothing less than one hundred percent performance from you in the next exercise and I count on you to deliver," Mr. Aidoo said.
He said: "The performance of the assembly is a shared responsibility and the assembly is an
interdependent system, which functions only when each link plays its role efficiently to make the whole achieve its goal."
In an address read for him, Mr. Akwasi Oppong-Fosu, Head of the Civil Service, said the government was committed to deepening decentralization in line the Local Government Service Act of 2003.
Mr Oppong-Fosu explained that the responsibility for human resource management and development functions for the about 33,000 employees of the Head of Civil Service had
been transferred to the Local Government Service Secretariat.