The Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) have been tasked to periodically review medium term development plans, to enable the assemblies to ascertain the impact of the strategies on the lives of the people.
Mr Eric Akobeng, Agona West District budget analyst, who made the suggestion, advised the MMDAs to ensure that the appraisals of are
based on impact and not investments made in the projects.
The budget analyst, who was facilitating a workshop for management staff of the assembly and heads of department in district, at Agona Nsaba, said the re-examination would enable the MMDAs to
identify projects or policies, which were not in the interest of the people, and to avoid duplication of development initiatives.
Mr Akobeng said:”Because the MMDAs do not review their plans, most of them undertake projects, which often become white elephants
and have no bearing on the lives of the people.”
He called on MMDAs to initiate only projects that would benefit the people to give meaning to the Government’s “Better Ghana” agenda.
Mr Akobeng commended District Development Facility secretariat for making capacity building a component of the Functional Organization Assessment Tool (FOAT).
Mr Akobeng noted that some poverty reduction programmes had not made any meaningful impact on the lives of the people because of poor
planning, monitoring and evaluation.
He said the assessment of FLOAT should centre on human resource management, planning, and financial management.
Other areas included auditing, physical capacity, environmental sanitation management, procurement transparency, openness and
accountability as well as relationship with structures of the assembly.
Mr Akobeng suggested that the periodic FOAT assessment must be associated with the indicators or checklist.
He said since FOAT deals with poverty level within communities in the MMDAs and not only with the performance of the assemblies or output of civil servants, the indicators must be objectively stated and not to be subjected to interpretation by different consultancy firms.
He said the basis for determining the FOAT score should be clearly spelt out, and MMDAs provided with the full complement of staff.
Mr Francis Ayensu, the District Planning Officer, said the workshop had helped participants to fashion out a common monitoring
and evaluation model, and an action plan format, to be used by all departments in preparing reports for the district.