Poor knowledge among marginalised excludes them from governance

A survey conducted in the North Dayi and South Dayi districts in the Volta Region has revealed that there is poor knowledge among the marginalised and vulnerable concerning democratic governance issues.

Such marginalised groups include people with disabilities (PWDs),  women and youth, and they all have been excluded from proceedings in democratic governance.

The survey was conducted by a rural-urban integrated non-governmental organisation (NGO), Global Action for Women Empowerment (GLOWA), in six randomly selected deprived and under-served communities.

It was sponsored by Strengthening Transparency Accountability and Responsiveness in Ghana (STAR-Ghana) and donor partners, namely DFID, DANIDA, EU and USAID.

The communities were Agordeke, Tsyiyenu and Tsyokpokope in South Dayi District and Tsyome-Sabadu, Tsoxor and Awate-Agame in the North Dayi District. 

 

Knowledge of democratic governance

The survey revealed that many persons with disabilities had poor knowledge of democratic governance issues such as social audit, voice and space to demand accountability from duty bearers, budgeting processing and micro-finance.

It indicated that PWDs, women and the youth had only average knowledge of the roles of Unit Committees, area councils, assembly members, and general assembly as they did not get regular public education and were never briefed, contacted, consulted by their assembly members, area council and Unit Committee members on democratic governance.

 

Support for NCCE

The Chief Executive of GLOWA, Ms Christine Egbeadzor, therefore,  recommended that the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) and the Department of Social Welfare should be assisted by the district assemblies to integrate local governance issues into their regular public education schedules.

She said the Presiding Members for the assemblies must make conscious efforts to invite the marginalised women located in deprived and hard-to-reach communities to also participate in public hearings of the assembly.

 

Advocacy

Ms Egbeadzor also said the co-ordinators of various packages and services must hold regular sensitisation and advocacy programmes to bring their services closer to the people within the framework of social accountability.

She said the inclusion of the marginalised groups in all decision-making processes was very vital and would indeed boost the assemblies performance in national assessment exercises such as Functional Organisation Assessment Test(FOAT), which would increase their financial base as they would qualify for District Development Fund(DDF) and attract other donor support for the development programmes in the district.  

 

Reaction by District Assemblies

In a response, the South Dayi Co-ordinating Director (DCD), Mr David Kanyi, said GLOWA would be invited to the assembly meeting to share the findings with assembly members for extension to the marginalised groups.

The North Dayi DCD, Mr Yakubu Jimah, said the assembly would strengthen and operationalise sub-structures because they were the cardinal institutions of the decentralisation process and said the findings would be factored into the Medium Term Development Plan (MTDP) to cover the marginalised, the  vulnerable and youth groups.

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