‘Accept District League Table in good faith’

The Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Osei Bonsu Amoah, has advised all the assemblies to “accept the report in good faith” since no government representative at the various assemblies will lose their jobs for performing poorly on the District League Table (DLT) released recently.

“Any dismissal may be based on the president’s own discretion about the performance of a particular assembly but not necessarily on the results of the DLT,” he assured.

The DLT is grading instrument published annually by the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in partnership with the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) which measures the level of development in all 216 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) across the country with rankings based on six key indicators which are health, education, sanitation, water, security and governance combined into single index, and districts are ranked from 1st to 216th place in terms of level of development.

Francis Boateng, the Chief Executive of Asante Akyem North District who topped the table, said the assembly did not rely solely on Common Fund from central government to facilitate its activities but solicit funds from external agencies and disclosed that German company granted district $280,000.00 used to embark on several projects.

“Seven communities in district which hitherto have no Junior High Schools have been provided with some during my administration, providing additional hands to aid Zoomlion to tackle sanitation issues, the biggest challenge I encountered was feud between Fulani herdsmen and crop farmers where I received between ten and fifteen reports of rape and crop destruction by farmers on a daily basis but in 2019, only two reports received.

However, Asokore Mampong Municipal, that came last on table rejected the report because it did not reflect what was on the ground and the Chief Executive, Dr Seidu Alidu indicated that a lot of things had been done in areas of health, education, sanitation, security and governance which shouldn’t have placed them at the bottom and asked residents to reject the report.

But George Baffour, local governance expert, advised the assemblies “not to consider the rankings as a competition but a guide to check their performance to do better at where they fell short.” -myjoyonline.com