Some participants with their laptops and tablets after the training in Tamale
Some staff of 16 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in the five regions of the North have received capacity building training in Tamale in the Northern Region.
The USAID-funded Enhancing WASH Activity, WVG in collaboration with Global Communities carried out a diagnosis of the decentralised planning and budgeting system in 16 MMDAs across four regions of the North in 2022 and the outcome of the gap analysis identified key capacity building gaps in resource mobilisation and data management that are prerequisites in contributing to improving WASH service delivery in Northern Ghana.
Based on this, a four-day capacity building workshop for key staff (District Coordinating Director, Planning Office, Budget Analyst, District Engineer, District Finance Officer and Environmental Health & Sanitation Officer and the Management Information System-MIS Officer) of 16 MMDAs across four Northern regions of Ghana was organised in Tamale to build the capacity and skills in the mobilisation of financial resources to augment existing MMDA funding streams and data management for planning and budgeting.
After the training, some data management gadgets such as laptops and mobile tablet for data collection were handed over to the respective MMDAs.
The participating MMDAs are Yendi, Mion, Karaga, Gushegu, Nanton, Sagnarigu, East Mamprusi, Mamprugu Moagduri, Bawku West, Garu, Tempane, Dafiama Bussie Issa, Nadowli-Kaleo, Sissala East, Sissala West, and Wa East.
Mr. Cephas Wedam, Project Coordinator of Enhancing WASH World Vision Ghana, indicated that World Vision is committed to working with the Government of Ghana through the Ministry of Health and the various MMDAs to strengthen the planning, budgeting, implementation, and monitoring systems at the MMDAs level for WASH services.
“Effective planning is an essential component of improving WASH services and WASH investment plans are necessary to ensure that the Government of Ghana (GoG) makes cost-effective investments that will serve most vulnerable populations. Incorporating WASH into MMDA Medium Term Development Plans (MTDPs), and building local government capacity to implement them are necessary first steps towards enhancing universal WASH coverage,” he stated.
According to him, the capacity building workshop organised for the various MMDAs is aimed at building their capacity in revenue mobilisation both internally and externally.
“The participants were taken through proposal management, data management, and data storage among others,” he added.
He urged the participants to use the skills they have acquired to collect relevant data for planning and budgeting to improve WASH activities at their various MMDAs levels.
Ing Theophilus Mensah, WASH Engineer, Global Communities, noted that assemblies cannot depend on only internally generated funds and that the participants have been trained to enable them to generate additional funds from other sources aside from internally generated funds.
He appealed to the participants to use the training to develop their own capacities as well as using the skills acquired to support development in their various MMDAs.
FROM Eric Kombat, Tamale