Increase budget allocation on monitoring and supervision in schools …stakeholders urge govt
Participants at a consultative forum to collate stakeholders’ inputs into the 2023 National Budget and economic policy, have urged the government to increase the budget allocation on monitoring and supervision in the yet-to-be-planned 2023 expenditure.
The participants observed that students’ performances in government schools were poor, mainly because proper monitoring and supervision were poor or inadequate and that resulted from insufficient funding for supervisors and M&E officials.
The one-day event was organised by SEND Ghana, a leading non-governmental organisation in West Africa, funded by UNICEF.
It was named “Consultative forum to collate stakeholders’ inputs into the 2023 national budget and economic policy” and attended by people from education, water, its members through direct club engagement, impactful training and joint Rotaract activities,” he said.
The new DRR said his agenda was to revive and empower clubs, while helping to tell a story of togetherness within Rotaract to the world.
He, therefore, urged Rotary clubs to support the District Rotaract leadership by fully paying district dues and project levies to help materialise the vision and sponsor Rotaractors to function which would help equip them into successful leadership.
In his hand-over remarks, Mr De Souza said among the project carried out by his team in the reviewing year included a convoy for peace, construction of a food storage facility and a school canteen at a primary school in Benin, a hybrid conference on the promotion of peace and the fight against conflicts in the world.
During this year, he said, the number of Rotaract Clubs increased from 75 to 80.
In a welcome address, the District Coordinator and past president, Elisha T. Joseph, said it was relevant to appreciate and celebrate sanitation and health, gender, children and social protection sectors among others.
The forum sought to collate inputs from the stakeholders to be featured in the 2023 government budget planning and implementation.
It also provided a platform for resource persons in the selected areas, education, WASH, gender, children and social protection, to present to the public, how the various ministries implemented their budget and the challenges they faced.
The SHEP Coordinator for Karaga District, Mr Fuseini Abdul-Rahaman, who led a group discussion on education advocated that five per cent of the District Assembly’s Common Fund allocated for education every year by the government be used to equip the Monitoring and Supervising Department at the Ghana Education Service in the various MMDAs, to help improve teaching and learning.
The Regional Programmes Manager of SEND Ghana, Mr Mumuni Mohammed, in his opening remarks, said the forum was organised to create room for the public to contribute to the economic and policy planning and implementation by the government.
He also said SEND Ghana, over years, had been engaging both the government and the public in shaping the government’s policies and programmes.
He expressed gratitude to UNICEF for sponsoring the forum and urged the participants to contribute significantly to the discussions which would be forwarded to the government to be featured on 2023’s government policy and economic planning.
Mr Fred Yiryel, a Principal Economics Officer at the Ministry of Finance who was also a resource person at the forum, said the global economic growth saw a downward reverse in the 2022 policy year from 6.1 per cent in the previous years to 3.6 per cent in 2022.
He also said Ghana’s inflation was on the rise due to global supply chain disruption, tightening monetary policy and the effect of the Russian-Ukraine war.
He also said Ghana’s external debt was increasing because the government was borrowing more from external sources than it does domestically.
FROM TIMES REPORTERR, TAMALE