Assembly training favours only core staff - ILGS

The Institute of Local Government Studies (ILGS) has said capacity building and training programmes for district assemblies favour only the core staff of the assemblies to the neglect of other stakeholders in the decentralisation processes.

A research report carried out by the ILGS said most of the Sub-District Structures of the assemblies were not functioning because of inadequate funding and the non-availability of operational logistics.

The ILGS revealed at the launch of two "Research Reports" authored by Mr. Richard Kambootah and Mr. Simon Seddoh Bokor, both staff of the institute, in Tamale.

Ibis- Ghana, an international NGO funded the publication of the research report.

Mr. Bokor authored the first Report titled: "Strengthening community participation in local governance: A case study of Ga East and West districts."

The second report: "Enhancing capacity -building at the sub-structures level for sustainable local (district) level development: A case study of East Gonja District Assembly", was written by Mr. Kambootah.

The study showed that lack of effective operationalization of the district assembly sub-structures due to poor human resource quality and the subsequent building of their capacity to improve upon their performance was a major hurdle.

Madam Agnes Gandaa, Co-ordinator of TEPCON, a catholic NGO, commended the two authors for coming out with such "brilliant material", saying that it would make good reading for students of local government, government/public officials and NGOs involved in decentralisation.

She expressed the hope that the work would serve as reference material for other researches and come out with further findings that would help strengthen the local government and decentralisation system.

Madam Gandaa appealed to the researchers to try and find out the level of participation of women and the disabled in the district assembly system.

The Director of the ILGS (Tamale Campus), Dr. Callistus Mahama, commended Ibis- Ghana for its support to the ILGS, especially in the areas of funding to build the capacity of various institutions and the district assemblies.

Source: GNA