The Committee on Government Assurances (CGA) of Parliament has met with civil society organisations (CSOs) within the governance landscape, to deliberate on how to effectively and efficiently track government assurances to promote good governance.
A platform has been provided by the Penplusbytes (PPB), a not-for-profit organisation, to enable the committee and the CSOs to discuss pathways to adopt in making it more effective and efficient in its work.
The committee is to pursue all government assurances, promises and undertakings, given by Cabinet Ministers and report to the House on extent to which such assurances had been carried out.
The workshop, held under the second phase of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa’s (OSIWA) funded project dubbed: ‘Connecting Citizens to Parliament’, offered the platform to explore other opportunities to better include citizens’ voices in governance process.
It was organised to provide the CGA, new and easier ways of monitoring promises of the Executive, and holding them accountable, gathered thoughts of likeminded organisations, concerted and inclusive approach to achieve greater impact.
Juliet Amoah, Executive Director of Penplusbytes, noted that as part of the programme, members of the committee and the citizenry would be provided digital platform to track government’s promises and know how far it had gone in fulfilling.
Collins Amankwa, Chairman of CGA, thanked Penplusbytes for working to ensure the committee’s oversight role was made much easier, more effective and efficient and asked the media to rally behind the committee to track all such promises and assurances made by the government.
Rashid Pelpuo, Ranking member of the Committee, observed that “the platform provided by Penplusbytes will help in strengthening our democracy and quality leadership being looked for by the citizenry”.
Jerry Sam, Deputy Director in charge of Programmes, Penplusbytes, explained that under the OSIWA project, Penplusbytes sought to continue to empower the citizenry to be active participants in development process.
“The initiative will ensure the committee and parliament, are better informed and more equipped to perform their oversight responsibility over the government to overcome limitations of the citizenry accessing and interfacing with parliament and the Executive,” Mr Sam said.
-GNA
