By Regina
Benneh, GNA
Sunyani, June 22,
GNA – The Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) has been urged
to be transparent and open up to the citizenry and
their stakeholders on developmental projects processes to prevent
accusations of corruption.
Mr. Clement Tandoh,
Chief of Party (CoP) of the Ghana’s Strengthening Accountability
Mechanisms (GSAM) gave the advice in an interview with Journalists after the
opening of a two-day forum on the effective use of social media platforms for
Citizen-Local Government Dialogue on capital projects in
Sunyani.
The forum attended
by 39 participants who comprised of Planning Officers from selected MMDAs in the Ashanti and
Brong-Ahafo Regions and representatives of
some civil society organisations was jointly organised by
the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID), CARE International, Oxfam Ghana and the
integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC).
It aimed
at identifying appropriate social media platforms for
promoting citizen-local government dialogue on capital projects and
how to monitor, evaluate and report on the use of social media.
Mr. Tandoh said all
the necessary information on the execution of any developmental project should
be made available to the public, particularly the media from the onset to
ensure transparency as a well building the trust between the public and the
Assemblies.
He emphasised the
citizenry must not only to use the local FM Radio Stations to criticise
the Assemblies about the implementation of projects but should
also take advantage of the introduction of the score cards to assess
their performances in ensuring quality developmental projects to
better the lives of the people.
Mr. Tandoh said GSAM
introduced in 2014 sought to strengthen citizen’s oversight of capital projects
to improve local government transparency, accountability and performances in
100 MMDAs in Ghana.
He observed that a
lot of people before the GSAM project felt cheated by the
Assemblies for not providing them with the right and quality developmental
projects and also did not understand the developmental processes because
the Assemblies did not make information available and accessible to
them.
Mr. Mohammed
Nurudeen Salifu, communication specialist, GSAM stated that social
media can help the people to get updates about projects being implemented in
their communities and also enable the Assemblies to get feedbacks from the
people.
GNA