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Karaga, Ghana – As part of efforts to improve governance and the quality of service delivery at the district level, Rural Initiatives for Self-Empowerment Ghana (RISE-Ghana)is implementing a long term project that seeks to promote service delivery in the Karaga and Gusheigu Districts in the Northern Region of Ghana.
Dubbed “I Am Aware” (IAA), the project is being championed by the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) together with RISE-Ghana with funding support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation of the United States of America.
The IAA project is informed by the development challenges of the Karaga and Gusheigu Districts which were ranked among the least developed districts in the Northern Region in the 2015 District League Table.
The DLT is a social accountability tool being used by UNICEF and CDD-Ghana each year to measure the level of development across all the 216 Districts in Ghana in the area of Water, Sanitation, Education, Health, Security and Governance.
According to Executive Director of RISE-Ghana, Awal Ahmed Kariama, in the 2017 DLT, the Karaga District improved from a rank of 207/216 in 2016 to 193/216 whiles the Gusheigu Districts lipped from 210/216 in 2016 to 215/216.
“To help improve the quality of services and responsiveness, the project is empowering citizen groups to actively participate in local governance. Citizens groups’submitted petitions to the District Assembly for input into the District Medium Term Development Plan (DMTP) for 2018-2021”, he noted.
Mr. Awal also explained that, community durbars were organized to educate citizens on the local governance policy, social accountability and their roles and responsibilities.
“As the I Am Aware project is building our capacity to demand transparency and accountability for improved services, they are also telling us that charity begins at home. We must begin demanding accountability from the various Water Boards in our respective communities to use proceeds to improve the water situation as we engage the District Assembly further.
“The opportunity to present petitions and proposals to various Assembly Committees is also an important area we must encourage various citizens like the Attaya Base to use”- Alhassan Mohammed, Presiding Member for Karaga District noted at one of its durbars.
