The mission statement

The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development exists to promote the establishment and development of a vibrant and well-resourced decentralized system of local government for the people of Ghana to ensure good governance and balanced rural based development.

The ex-President in his wisdom added the Environment portfolio to the Ministry. This was against the backdrop of the fact that local governance and rural development has a strong correlation with environmental sustenance.    

The Ministry’s performance guiding principle are:

• Formulating, implementing, monitoring, evaluating and co-ordinating reform policies and programmes to democratize governance and decentralize the machinery of government.
• Reforming and energizing local governments to serve effectively as institutions for mobilizing and harnessing local resources for local national administration and development.
• Facilitating the development of all human settlements through community and popular participation.
• Facilitating the promotion of a clean and healthy environment.
• Facilitating horticultural development.
• Improving the demographic database for development planning and management.
• Promoting orderly human settlement development.

The Ministry believes in efficiency, effectiveness and transparency.

Focus on the above will be based on two divisions:

1. Local Government - Strong Structures, Revenue Mobilization and Collection, and Sanitation.
2. Rural Development - Rural roads, Information and Communications Technology, Tourism and Agric Processing.
3. Environment - Sanitation

Objectives

To formulate appropriate policies and programmes to accelerate the implementation of decentralization of the machinery of government. This is to avoid re-centralization of government machinery.

1. To improve upon the human resources and institutional capacities for all levels of the decentralized government machinery (District, town and Unit)
2. To improve the capacity of communities and local government institutions to mobilize, and manage resources for accelerated rural and urban development.
3. To promote community based registration, collation, analysis and publication of data on all births and deaths occurring in Ghana.
4. To promote human development and sustain the orderly and healthy growth of rural and urban settlements in Ghana.
5. To monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of local government institutions for improved management performance.

The Ministry, to achieve its objectives has a lined up of regular annual activities which are successfully held as a means of creating awareness amongst Ghanaians;

i. Local Government Week

ii. Sanitation Week

iii. Rural Development

These celebrations have been instituted to be part of the Ministry’s annual calendar of events.

1. The Monthly Regional District Chief Executives Meetings continue. This meetings have developed into zonal basis where the Chief Executives meet to share ideas and strategize on the implementation of national programmes and agendas.
2. A Mid-Year Review Meeting of District Chief Executives is also held regularly.
3. The Annual Conference of DCEs is also held regularly on a rotational basis.

          Finance

1. The District Assemblies continued to make appreciable increases in revenue mobilization and collection. These have been possible due to constant sensitization by Hon. Minister and his Deputies to plug all the leakages in Assemblies revenue collection. Currently some of the volunteers under the national youth employment programme are assisting in revenue mobilization in the districts with tremendous results.
2. To further strengthen transparency at the district level the Ministry continues to publish the development projects both completed and on-going and initiated since January 7, 2001 when the NPP administration took the reins of government.
3. The Financial Memorandum for Local Governments-Act 54 has been reviewed.