Ghana Anti-Corruption Coalition (GACC) has held a stakeholders’ engagement forum for citizens, heads of departments of government institutions, the Savelugu Municipal Assembly and other development partners, regarding the assembly’s 2020 and 2021 COVID – 19 expenditure.
The Forum, titled ‘Accountability Platform to discuss COVID – 19 Expenditure; monitoring findings, is part of the activities under a project meant to bring Accountability to citizens, on the ‘COVID – 19 expenditure.
The project seeks to provide platforms in MMDAs, to discuss monitoring findings, which was carried out in the last quarter of 2021 on how the COVID – 19 National Trust Fund was expended.
The monitoring was carried out by the LANet of Savelugu Municipality in collaboration with SWIDA – Gh and the GACC.
Speaking at the forum, project lead from the GACC, Mr. Abdulai Imoro said ‘’The project is about COVID – 19 Transparency and Accountability. When we had our first case of COVID – 19, a lot of funds were committed from the government and others were sourced from international agencies and within our own settings, we were able to set up the COVID – 19 National Trust Fund to help fight the spread. Now, concerns have always been, these funds that we have been able to generate and receive from these external agencies, are they judiciously using these resources to fight COVID – 19, or someone somewhere is profiting from it. Because people make money out of government funds.’’
He added that ‘’As part of the project, we try to create platforms for government to account to the people on how funds are being managed and also use that same platform for the citizens to ask questions regarding things that they do not understand. So one of the platforms is what we are doing today known as the accountability platform.’’ He added
The group (LANet) revealed how much was received and spent between 2020 and 2021 in the municipality to manage the pandemic, while also raising the funding challenges the assembly faced.
These funding challenges include uncontrolled market centres, minimal public education on the pandemic, inadequate sanitation facilities, Rapid urbanization, etc.
Participants at the forum also took turns to make their cases and sought some clarifications from the assembly and other departmental heads present.
One of them was from the persons with disabilities who asked why there was no special treatment for them during the pandemic when interventions were rolled out to support citizens.
There was a question on why many businesses do not get financial support from the government, where the technical person at NBSSI at the Savelugu municipal assembly admitted that it is true that many businesses do not get funding from the agency, but asserted that most of them present proposals that do not meet standard.
The Accountability Bridges: providing platforms for Engaging Government on Transparent and Accountable COVID – 19 Expenditure’ project, is funded by the US Embassy and implemented by the GACC.
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