Tema Manhean Youth Take On Assembly Members

A section of the youth of Tema Manhean, in the Tema East Constituency, are unhappy with their assembly members who have allegedly failed to facilitate the community’s development.

The accusations levelled against the assembly members included their failure to organise interactive meetings with their residents before and after general assembly sittings of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA); the inability of the assembly members to lobby for developmental initiatives that addressed the concerns of residents, and what some of the youth described as ‘general incompetence’ on the part of the assembly members.

These accusations were made at the third Youth Governance Forum organised by Nimba Community Support Services with the support of Ibis West Africa, a Danish NGO.

The overall goal of the forum was to strengthen the involvement of the electorates in the community in shaping policies, influencing local priorities and resource allocation to enhance social development in Tema Manhean.

The intervention sought to facilitate the inclusion of all sections of the locality including the traditional leadership, women’s groups and the youth in local government development programme formulation, planning, implementation and evaluation as well as strengthen the capacity of residents to work directly with their political representatives at the local government level.

The youth expressed disappointment that though invitations were sent to all the six assembly members of the locality and some TMA representatives by the organisers of the forum, only one assembly member, Mr Eric Nii Quaye, turned up for the meeting.

Mr Quaye, who honoured the invitation was not spared interrogation by a section of the youth who questioned him on how he represented the electoral area when he had held no interactive meetings with residents either before or after general assembly meetings for 2009.

According to the youth, in the absence of such meetings, developmental opportunities available in the metropolis remained unknown to them, while the residents were unable to track resources made available for local development.

The Project Manager of Nimcoss recalled minutes of previous meetings where the Member of Parliament, Mr Ashong –Narh, complained bitterly of laxity on the part of the assembly members, and encouraged the youth to stand for district level elections to change the status quo.