Participants at a day’s Budget and Expenditure tracking forum in Tamale have called on government to trained more health personnel for adequate deployment to health facilities in the Northern Region.
The participants believe deployment of adequate health personnel will help address the numerous health problems confronting rural people.
The participants who were mainly petty traders, persons living with disability, women group’s artisans and some former assembly members made the called at a Social Public Expenditure and Accountability forum (SPEFA) in Tamale.
The forum was organized by the Northern Development Society (NORDESO), a local nongovernmental organization based in Tamale with support from SNV, a Netherlands based organization.
SNV was contracted by World Bank and Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to support implementing partners of SPEFA project which targeted some metropolitan and municipal assemblies in Ghana including Tamale Metro and Yendi Municipality.
The forum was to sensitized citizens on budget and expenditure tracking process at the Tamale metropolitan assembly and how they could track the use of taxes collected by the assembly officials.
Some of the participants say they expect the assembly to use taxes collected from them to address maternal and infant mortality problems and poor Basic Education Certification Examination (B.E.C.E) results by at least 80% by 2018.
Others also wants the assembly to consult the citizenry on the award of contracts to enable them monitor progress of work projects.
This, according to the citizens is the surest way to avoid shoddy execution of development projects by local contractors.
The citizens also want clear distinction between assembly, central government and members of parliament projects in their respective areas. ’’We sometimes get confuse as to who is really providing development in our areas, assembly, MP’s and government all compete for credit and it must stop’’ a participant said.
The Project Coordinator of NORDESO, Mansu Jacob told Zaa News, in an interview that, the public need to know how to track the budget of the assemblies because it is their taxes the assemblies collect on daily bases to provide them basic social amenities.
On the monitoring of development projects embark by the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly, Mr Mansu said all projects under the urban development grant which is being sponsor by the World Bank will be monitor closely.
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