The Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Julius Debrah has reminded members of planning units of all the Regional Coordinating Councils of their enormous responsibilities of monitoring, evaluating and harmonizing all the activities of Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies to make sure that they are in conformity with the national policy.
He said the units are expected to have a complete overview of their region�s development programmes, projects and issues at any point in time.
Mr. Debrah who is also the Acting Eastern Regional Minister said this in a speech read for him by the Regional Coordinating Director, Abdulai Zakari at a two-day training workshop on the preparation of the 2014-2017 District Medium Term Development Plans in Koforidua.
The workshop was to provide the relevant data, maps and information for the preparation of the plan, prepare the participants to supervise the planning process at the district level and support the assemblies in the formulation of their plans.
The Minister said the units, as part of their functions is to establish a database that would make it possible to advise the Regional Coordinating Councils and the assemblies appropriately on development issues.
He said in spite of the fact that the units have performed creditably in monitoring the assemblies� activities, a lot more needs to be done to ensure that the needs and aspirations of the people are met.
He was grateful to the European Union for assisting the Ghana Government in organizing the workshop to help sharpen the skills and knowledge of the participants on their mandate.
Mr. Debrah, however, called on the members to be guided by the new things learnt at the workshop in their endeavours.
The Regional Planning Officer, Jonathan Duodu Awuah said the assemblies are required to prepare monitoring and evaluation plans to guide the implementation of their plans, saying, it should be based on the guidelines provided by the National Development Planning Commission.
Mr. Awuah entreated the assemblies to formulate communication strategies to disseminate their annual progress reports to create awareness of the expected roles of stakeholders to promote dialogue and generate feedback on performance.
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