The visit, which started with a call on the Regional Minister Alhaji Alhassan Sulemana, and his deputy, Mr Amidu Issahaku Chinia, was to interact with staff of the Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) and the various assemblies to ascertain first-hand information, the challenges confronting them and to find lasting solutions to them.

Addressing staff of the assemblies, Dr Ato Arthur indicated that his visit formed part of a strategy to better position the Service to achieve its mandate of a “world class decentralized and client-oriented Service”.

He spelt out plans and strategies anchored on five thematic areas namely: capacities building of staff; sharing of best practices among Assemblies; improving revenue mobilization with the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT); sanitation management and professionalism to make Ghana’s decentralisation process more vibrant and efficient to propel the country’s development.

He said strengthening the developing planning units of the Regional Coordinating Councils and the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) was crucial for the collection of reliable data to ensure effective planning and budgeting.Dr Ato Arthur noted that so much was expected from staff of MMDAs and that capacity building of staff was a priority and encouraged the assemblies to share skills and knowledge to help promote best practices to ensure balanced development in the 254 MMDAs.   

He said there was the need to also use ICT to improve Internally Generated Funds (IGF) of MMDAs, since majority of the assemblies relied on the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) for development, which was inadequate.

Dr Arthur said the 2016 report on the performance of MMDAs revealed that the best 20 assemblies had an average of 33 per cent of their revenue coming from the IGF and the worst-performing assemblies contributed less than three per cent of the total revenue from the IGF in relation to the DACF and other government grants.

This he said informed the vision to use ICT to facilitate and develop a Digital Mapping System to assist in the identification of rating properties within assemblies and use professionally trained revenue collectors to collect more revenue to improve on the IGF.

The Head of Service also identified sanitation as one of the core mandates of the MMDAs, saying, the service would seek to build the capacity of assemblies to improve on sanitation in the various MMDAs.

He said the LGS would enhance the capacity of Environmental Health and Sanitation Officers to ensure that they carried out their responsibilities for improved sanitation in the MMDAs. Dr Ato Arthur said MMDAs had signed a performance contract with the LGS on Innovation and sanitation, local economic development, work place environment and IGF Improvement and that, key performance indicator measured the contract.

He said the indicators would be used to evaluate the performance of the assemblies based on the contract that they have signed and this would be placed on the district league table from first to 254.

Dr Ato Arthur said localizing development was the greatest way to foster people’s development; hence, a professional’s conference will be organize in September, this year to deliberate on how to deepen the relevance and importance of Local Governance in the country.He called for collaboration and teamwork to achieve the mandate of the Service.

According to Dr Ato Arthur, the major challenge of the LGS was the inadequate financial resources to support the effective delivery of their mandate of securing effective administration and management in the country.

He said the refusal of staff to accept postings from one assembly to another was also a challenge, as well as staff lateness to work, especially in the rural areas where lateness to work seemed to be a normal routine. This, he insisted on the use of electronic biometric clocking system in every assembly to monitor the movements of staff and that over 100 assemblies had already installed the system with the other assemblies given a deadline of December 2018 to do so.

Dr Ato Arthur said the LGS would continue to contribute immensely to the decentralisation agenda, which had been positioned as the driver of local development, a reflection of the Service’s motto: “Decentralisation, Democracy and Development.”

The Municipal and District Chief Executives as well Municipal and District Coordinators Directors outlined their strategies and measures initiated for the realization of the goals of their various Assemblies including achieving Open Defecation Free (ODF) status in the area of sanitation.