Accra, Feb. 15, – The Ghana
Centre for Democratic Development (CDD – Ghana) maiden report on the
implementation of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Government’s flagship
Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP), indicates that the
Government is on course.
The IPEP programme-predicated on
the Government’s economic vision that systematically decentralising
infrastructure development would spur economic growth, create jobs, and reduce
poverty – would see government allocate one million dollars for each of the 275
constituencies in the country annually.
Although significantly different
in terms of structure and focus, IPEP does not depart too far from several
other development initiatives over the years.
Experience from the past and
current development projects of such nature show that their management record
is extremely poor – owing to the very nature of their stakeholder consultation
processes, planning, design, and implementation – as they are often mismanaged,
unaccountable, and lack transparency.
To protect IPEP from false start,
ensure transparency and accountability of its implementation, strengthen the
framework and performance of the institutions set up to govern the program, as
well ensure an efficient and good corporate management of the public funds
allocated to IPEP, CDD-Ghana is implanting the project “IPEP Tracker” to
monitor implementation.
Principally, this report forms
part of the first phase of the CDD-Ghana IPEP Tracker project and focuses on
the assessment and monitoring of the preliminary processes for the
implementation of IPEP at the national, regional and district/constituency
levels.
The report is a culmination of
the review of the NPP Election 2016 Manifesto, government policy statements,
the new Development Authority (DA) Acts, and about 150 stakeholders and key
informant interviews, including Ministers, coordinating and planning Directors,
civil society organisations, media, political party executives, and
representatives of traditional authorities at the national, regional, and
district/constituency levels.
Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh,
the Executive Director, CDD-Ghana, speaking at the maiden report launch of the
IPEP, dubbed the “One Million One Constituency Programme," said the
project was being undertaken by the CDD-Ghana with funding from the DFID, under
its Strengthening Action Against Corruption (STACC) programme.
He said they do not want to do a
post-mortem of this IPEP programme, adding that, “rather than do a post-mortem,
what we decided to do is, even before the moneys are disbursed, we decided that
it would be important to get down to the field and find out what structures,
processes and institutions we creating at the sub-national level to use the
resources that are going to disbursed under this programme”.
He said the amount of money
involved in the programme was a significant infusion of money from the national
capital budget to the local level; stating that “how the money is used is a
function of what processes has been created to really use the money”.
He said findings from their
research, would serve as feedback into the process now as the moneys were
beginning to be disbursed to inform some modification.
He said they were coming to this
against the drop of the problems and failures with the erstwhile Savannah
Accelerated Development Authority (SADA) and other development initiatives
where moneys were injected ostensibly for the benefits of local communities but
they really do not often times get there and when they get there they really do
not have the intended effects.
“This is our little contribution
based on that history to try to avert the same kinds of problems that we had
with SADA and other development authorities,” he said.
Mr Awal Mohammed, Research
Officer and Team Leader for the IPEP, said the objectives of this project was
to strengthen the framework and performance of institutions set up to govern
the IPEP.
He said the project seeks to
eliminate corruption and misuse of public resources by ensuring transparency
and accountability in allocation, disbursement, expenditure, accounting and
auditing of public funds.
Mr Joseph Dome Chognuru, Chief
Director, Ministry of Special Development Initiatives, lauded CDD –Ghana for
the report; stating that the Government would give it the needed attention.
Professor Doe Tsikata, Head of
Department, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, who chaired the
function, hailed CDD – Ghana for performing a very important function of
holding duties bearers accountable to the citizenry.
GNA
Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh
(1st R) with the panellists
No comments:
Post a Comment