Hajia Mariam Iddrisu, the Municipal Chief Executive for Sagnarigu in the Northern Region, has appealed to metropolitan municipal and district chief executives (MMDCEs) to adequately engage and resource women aspiring to participate in the District Level Elections.
“Financial constraints were deterring women from participating in local governance and the assemblies need to support and assist us adequately to prepare and contest in the elections,” she stressed.
Hajia Iddrisu made the appeal in an interview on the sidelines of a capacity building workshop for assembly women in Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region as part of a national sensitisation programme organised by the Institute of Local Government Studies (ILGS) in collaboration with the National Association of Local Authorities (NALAG)and the Inter Ministerial Coordination Committee (IMCC) on decentralisation at increasing women’s participation in the forthcoming district level elections.
“NALAG is supposed to ensure women are encouraged and resourced to enable them to contest for district level elections and it is working with gender sensitive organisations to find ways to support and assist women aspirants to embark on their campaigns successfully.
“When women are well attended to, it will help them move to higher heights, increase our participation in elections, we owe it responsibility as MMDCEs to encourage women to participate especially those elected assembly women and to help government appointees to move to become elected assembly members.
“NALAG is also working towards a bigger forum to equip regional representatives to help MMDCEs to encourage women to contest in the elections, the women’s caucus of the MMDCEs is also working to push for the passage of the affirmative action bill, women form the majority and need to be properly represented in decision making.
“I call on women, my colleague female MMDCEs to exhibit boldness, make our intentions known, so as to attract, get support and assistance to win the elections, scout for young girls from schools to groom them and build their capacities to grow up to leadership positions,” Hajia Iddrisu intimated. -GNA
