Some 64 staff of 16 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in the five regions of the north have received capacity building training on improving WASH services in Tamale in the Northern Region.
The participating MMDAs are Yendi, Mion, Karaga, Gushegu, Nanton, Sagnarigu, East Mamprusi, Mamprugu Moagduri, Bawku West, Garu, Tempane, Dafiama Bussie Issa, Nadowli-Kaleo, Sissala East, Sissala West and Wa East.
The USAID-funded Enhancing WASH Activity, World Vision Ghana, in collaboration with Global Communities carried out a diagnosis of the decentralized planning and budgeting system in 16 MMDAs across four regions of the north in 2022 and the outcome of the gap analysis identified key capacity building gaps in resource mobilization and data management that are prerequisites in contributing to improving WASH service delivery in Northern Ghana.
The four-day capacity building workshop is to build the capacity and skills of the beneficiaries in the mobilization of financial resources to augment existing MMDAs funding streams and data management for planning and budgeting.
Data management gadgets such as laptops and mobile tablet for data collection were handed over to the respective MMDAs.
Project Coordinator for Enhancing WASH at World Vision Ghana Cephas Wedam indicated that World Vision is committed to work with the government of Ghana through Ministry of Health and the various MMDAs to strengthen the planning, budgeting, implementation and monitoring systems at the MMDAs level for WASH services.
“Effective planning is an essential component of improving WASH services and WASH Investment plans are necessary to ensure that the Government of Ghana (GoG) makes cost-effective investments that will serve most vulnerable populations.
“Incorporating WASH into MMDA Medium Term Development Plans (MTDPs), and building local government capacity to implement them are necessary first steps towards enhancing universal WASH coverage.”
He emphasized the capacity building workshop organized for the various MMDAs is aimed at building their capacity in revenue mobilization both internally and external.
“The participants were taken through proposal management, data management, data storage among others.”
He urged the participants to use the skills they have acquired to collect relevant data for planning and budgeting to improve WASH activities at their various MMDAs levels.
WASH Engineer at Global Communities Ing. Theophilus Mensah noted that assemblies cannot depend on only internally generated funds (IGFs) and that the participants have been trained to enable them to generate additional funds from other sources aside the internally generated funds.
“MMDAs should be able to plan, budget, implement, monitor and they cannot do all these without some key capacities and so they need some resources to do that as well as understanding data to be able TL plan well. We have equipped them to understand that they can also get other funds from other sources.”
He appealed to the participants to use the training to develop their own capacities as well as using the skills acquired to support development in their various MMDAs.