The Ada East District Assembly has taken its medium-term policy planning document to the doorstep of residents to ensure broad-based grass-roots stakeholder participation.
Ms Sarah Dugbakie Pobee, Ada East District Chief Executive, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Ada that the assembly initiated the door-to-door engagement as they realised that residents did not participate when it was organised at the zonal council levels.
Ms Pobee said this when she interacted with GNATema team led by Mr Francis Ameyibor, Tema Regional Manager, during a working visit to Ada and its environs to meet leaders in the area.
The team also met the Ada Traditional Council leadership.
The DCE explained that six communities had been engaged on the medium-term policy for the development of Ada East.
She explained that the 27 electoral areas had been clustered into 18 communities for easy access and engagement, adding that together with the Planning Officer and other team members, they would resume their consultation with residents after which opinion leaders and chiefs would have their turn to make an input.
Ms Pobee said the inability of many residents to participate in the engagement in the past led to the assembly embarking on some development projects that inhabitants thought was not their priority needs.
The DCE said so far, the communities that had been engaged had raised issues of roads as their main challenge as they impacted negatively on their farming and fishing activities.
She encouraged residents and stakeholders to participate in such engagements to enable the assembly to collate their needs, which would help in the planning of projects and policies to be initiated in the various communities.
Touching on some of the works done under the 2017-2019 period, she mentioned that most of the projects covered health, education and the economic welfare of the people.
Mr Ameyibor commended the Ada East DCE for the initiative, as the community engagement was one of the critical pillar stones of the country’s decentralisation drive.
He said public participation in development created broader sense of ownership and it promoted the respect for the traditional authorities, which constitutes a major channel of our local governance system.
Mr Ameyibor explained that the GNA Tema Regional Secretariat had embarked on strategic stakeholder engagement with state and non-state actors as well as civil society organisation towards nation building.
“We recognise the excellence in stakeholder engagement, which we believe will assist us GNA and our stakeholders to deliver and ensure that society plays active watchdog role so that institutions perform,” he said.
GNA
