Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) risk coming up with the worse Medium Term Development Plans (MTDPs) ever due to inadequate funds and time.
Several MMDAs had not yet completed their annual action plans and had been given up to May 29, as a deadline to complete and submit their MTDPs.
The MMDAs required lots of resources and time to come out with good MTDPs, but as a result of inadequate funds, it is expected that MMDAs would come up with poor or fake MTDPs.
It is alleged that MMDAs had not received any release from government since December 2016, and some of them, especially those in the Upper West Region could not boast of having GHc500.00 in their accounts.
The situation has compelled a few committed Officers of the district assemblies to resort to fuelling vehicles from their own pockets to be able to move round and work.
Participants at a capacity building meeting for District Planners and Budget Officers on mainstreaming gender and climate change issues into the MTDPs made this known in Wa.
The project, “Southern Voices on Adaptation Project” is being implemented by ABANTU for Development in partnership with Community Development Alliance (CDA) in the Upper West Region.
The participants including District Planning Officers, District Budget Officers and selected Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) were drawn from eight selected districts in the Region.
Mr. Issifu Salifu Kanton, Executive Director of CDA, said the gender dimension of poverty needed to reflect in any development planning that sought to tackle poverty.
That, he said, explained the essence of building capacities of MMDAs on mainstreaming gender and climate change issues into their MTDPs and programmes using the joint principles on adaptation.
Mr. Kanton said women were worse affected by the impact of climate change, yet women were still the same people who would often pick up the pieces, improvise solutions and provide responses to the challenge imposed by climate change.
The CDA Executive Director pointed out that unfortunately, women’s low representation in decision making as well as their limited access and control of resources at all levels was worsening the situation.
He therefore urged MMDAs to endeavour to factor in women needs during the planning process in order to mitigate the effect of climate change on them and society in general.
“We cannot develop without consciously looking at the gender dimension of development particularly the differential vulnerabilities,” he said.
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