Assemblies cry for basic human resource

The 106 district assemblies created in the last 10 years still lack the needed human resource to propel their growth, an audit of the human resource of those assemblies has revealed.

The audit, however, showed that assemblies in regional capitals such as Accra and Kumasi, described as ‘resource rich’ by the Head of the Local Government Service (LGS), Dr Callistus Mahama, had an over-concentration of the skills needed to transform the resource-deprived assemblies.

Deployment to deprived assemblies

Consequently, the LGS will, from the end of June this year, deploy the excess skills in some assemblies to those that need them.

In an interview with the Daily Graphic, Dr Mahama explained that about 45 per cent of the human resouce at the assemblies was in the Greater Accra and Ashanti regions.

The LGS, he indicated, had commissioned a study to come up with standardised staffing numbers for all assemblies. 

There are three categories of assemblies — metropolitan, with a population of over 250,000; municipal, with 95,000 people, and district, with a population of 75,000.

“We do have some level of standards for all assemblies already but what we want to do now is clearly define the minimum and or maximum staffing numbers for the three categories of assemblies,” Dr Mahama stated.

“Once we are able to establish that, we will deploy the excess to the deprived assemblies by June this year,” he stated.

The human resource audit

Dr Mahama stated that in the latter part of last year, the LGS undertook a human resource audit to find out the skills mix in all the assemblies, giving the magnitude of their responsibilities. 

“Staffing levels at assemblies are high but the audit revealed that certain critical skills were missing in the area of engineering, health assistants, planning, budget, administration, among others,” he said. 

According to him, the worst affected were those created between 2003 and 2007 and in 2012.

Between 2003 and 2007, 60 new assemblies were created, while 46 new ones were added in 2012. 

Before the new ones were created, there were 110 assemblies already in existence, bringing the number of assemblies to 216.

“The analysis showed that the new ones were short of a critical skills mix and so we are going to deploy a good number of critical skills to the deprived 106 districts,” Dr Mahama said.

Most of the new districts had fresh graduates who lacked experience, he said, adding that sometimes it was only the coordinating directors who had experience.

Dr Mahama said it was only fair that the assemblies got those staff to execute their mandate and be able to generate their own funds.

Writer’s email: naa.bentil@graphic.com.gh