The Honourable Minister for Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development, Hon. Daniel Botwe has tasked the media to hold local authorities responsible for their actions and inefficiencies that results in the perennial flooding in some parts of the country whenever the rains come. The Hon. Minister emphasised that duty bearers, the local authorities are responsible for implementing interventions that will mitigate and ameliorate the impact of flooding within their local areas.

The Hon. Minister in his submission, indicated that by performance standards, MMDAs are required to to utilise 20 percent of their Internal Generated Fund (IGF) to support improvement in sanitation and waste management and drainage maintenance within their localities. He, therefore, emphasised that it is important for citizens to know how their revenues are utilised.

According to the Minister, it is the responsibility of every local Assembly to identify flooding hotspots within its catchment area and develop plans to minimise and mitigate the impact of flooding in their jurisdictions.

The Hon. Minister made these remarks at a meeting with Chief Executives and their Coordinating Directors of beneficiary Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies of the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development (GARID) Project at the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development on Friday 24^th March, 2023. Under the Project, the beneficiary Assemblies are given grants to support improvement and maintenance of drainage infrastructure through a performance-based grant system. The grants  disbursed to the 17 Assemblies among others was to be used to desilt and dredge priority drainage infrastructure and also procure equipment needed to facilitate the execution of these activities.

He indicated that this year a total amount of GHC7, 150,500.00 will be disbursed as grants to the 17 GARID Assemblies and each of the beneficiary Assemblies will receive GHC420,971.00.

The GARID Project is an inter-ministerial project implemented by the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development (MLGDRD), Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSWR)and led by the Ministry of Works and Housing (MWH).

The Project Development Objective is to improve drainage, solid waste management and provision of services and infrastructure in priority flood-prone informal settlements within the Odaw Basin.

A three-day training Workshop on the Ghana Urban Mobility and Accessibility Project ( GUMAP) aimed to build the capacities of stakeholders and beneficiary Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies (MMAs) within the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area ( GAMA) on traffic planning and management has taken place.

The training served as a tool to collect data and information, afford the opportunity to assess where technical assistance will be needed on the project and invest in pilot projects.

The Ghana Urban Mobility and Accessibility Project is a six Million USD financed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) being implemented by the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development (MLGDRD).

The Project's overall objective is to improve accessibility and mobility in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA). GUMAP is focused on capacity building, institutional strengthening and limited investment measures.

The beneficiaries under the Project include the Greater Accra Passenger Transport Executives (GAPTE), six MMAs (Accra Metropolitan Assembly, Tema Metropolitan Assembly, Ga West Municipal Assembly, Ga Central Municipal Assembly, Ga East Municipal Assembly and La-Nkwantanang Madina Assembly), Head Office of the Department of Urban Roads (DUR) and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

The implementation of GUMAP started in 2016 and is expected to end by December 2023.

Source:                PUBLIC RELATIONS (MLGDRD)

A working session to review and provide guidance on the Annual Workplan and Budget for the Gulf of Guinea Northern Regions Social Cohesion Project (SOCO) for the year 2023 has taken place in Aburi, in the Eastern Region.

The session provided the platform for participants to review the progress of the project, provide guidance on the Annual Workplan and Budget for the year 2023 as well as consolidate all subprojects selected by the 48 SOCO beneficiary Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies for the annual year.

Opening the session, the Chief Director for the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development, Madam Marian W. A. Kpakpah, explained that for the project to be successful, there was the need for comprehensive multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional perspectives, thus, the working session with the NTC.

She called on participants; who make up the NTC to take advantage of the session to work with the stakeholders and beneficiaries of the project in mind to put in place interventions that will enable them to feel the impact of the project through improved social and economic development.

The NTC is the body that provides inter-agency technical guidance for the implementation of project components and makes policy recommendations to the Project Oversight Committee (POC) for decision-making.

The formation of the NTC  is to achieve effective collaboration with other MDAs to cover the relevant sectors of the project to ensure consistency of project development objectives with sectoral policies and programmes.

The membership of the NTC included the Ministries of Finance; Gender, Children and Social Protection; Food and Agriculture, National Security, Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration and the Ministry of the Interior.

Others include the National Disaster and Management Organisation; National Development Planning Commission, Northern Development Agency, Ghana Immigration Service, as well as the National Youth Authority,

The Gulf of Guinea Northern Regions Social Cohesion (SOCO) Project is a sub-Sahel Regional project aimed at providing support for the northern parts of the Gulf of Guinea countries (Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Togo and Benin), that are hardest hit by fragilities due to food insecurity and climate change, conflict and violence. These risk factors are anticipated to influence community members and youth within these sub-Sahel regions to be highly susceptible to extremist ideologies.

SOCO is expected to help improve the socio-economic resilience of 48 targeted districts in the Upper West, Upper East, Northern, North East, Savannah and Oti Regions through various components in the form of investments in Infrastructure, Local Economic Development and Youth Engagement activities.

It is expected to also provide an avenue to coordinate border-area investments, information and improve regional dialogues. The project uses the Community Driven Development (CDD) approach where decisions for investments are taken by communities in a participatory manner, to promote a sense of ownership for the investments that will be made.

The beneficiary District Assemblies will lead the implementation at the local level thus providing an opportunity for capacity development in projects. The project will strategically build capacity in procurement, Financial Management and Social Risk Management in a coordinated manner.

SOCO represents continuous learning on developing scalable interventions that can effectively promote the elimination of extreme poverty to ensure equitable national development and shared prosperity for every citizen.

Source: PUBLIC RELATIONS UNIT (MLGDRD)