Stakeholder Session On District League Table Held To Educate Public

Following the launch of the District League Table (DLT), the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) and UNICEF Ghana have followed it up with a stakeholder session to shed more light on the findings that were uncovered.

The DLT is aimed at supporting the social accountability agenda in Ghana; and in so doing generate governmental responsiveness and accountability.

The concept focuses on improving the well being of Ghanaians, especially the poor. Speaking to journalist at the session, Ambassador Francis Tsegah, who is a senior research fellow with CDD-Ghana stated that the “objective of the DLT is to increase social accountability in Ghana that will lead to improving development for the country's population.”

He explained that the move would also stimulate citizens' engagement with duty bearers over issues affecting their lives.

Ms. Susan N. Ngongi, a representative from UNICEF also added her opinion and made it clear that the concept is a simple tool for ranking progress toward delivering wellbeing and key basic services in each of Ghana's 216 districts.

She noted that several discussions and desk study were undertaken on the practicability of acquiring applicable information on the specific identified service sectors. Health, education, sanitation, governance, security and access to water, were the six key services that were crucial for the study.

She reiterated that the DLT aims to empower and doesn’t intend to 'name and shame' districts that are facing challenges. She ended her submission by stating that the DLT would rather help highlight imbalance in local development and encourage stakeholders to give more support where needed.

Mr. Mohammed Awal, who is also a Research Officer with CDD-Ghana also added his voice to topic and maintained that the DLT tool has the potential of being a game changer. He charged Ghanaians to look into the future and seek a better life for our children.

He observed that although the road to better life is bumpy, long and difficult to reach, we need a tool like DLT to help us assess where we are.

He took time off to demonstrate how the tool had been able to help them track the performances of Ga South Municipal and the Tema Metropolitan. Both districts are located within the same region but the later scored 69 to place 20th whilst the former scored 50 to place 187 out of the 216 districts in Ghana.

As mentioned before, Mr. Awal indicated that the tracking was based on health, education, sanitation, governance, security and access to water.