The District Co-ordinating Director for the Afigya Kwabre District Assembly Mrs. Emelia Botchey who led the appeal said some of the data for the project do not reflect current development and service delivery in the District.

She cited the rural water coverage as an example. Mrs. Botchey said the data being used by the project was collected over eight years ago by the Community Water and Sanitation Agency which does not reflect the current water coverage in the District since a lot of investment has been made in the water sector after the last data collection.

She added Resource allocations to MMDAs are not the same especially among Metropolitan/ Municipal and Small district Assemblies  hence rating should factor all these disparities.

On security, the Co-ordinating Director said the Afigya Kwabre District falls under more than two Districts Police Commands which makes it challenging using data from the Ghana Police Service to measure the citizen Police ratio thus making it inflective of the situation on the ground.

She said for instance a community like Atimatim falls under the Tafo Police command in the Kumasi Metropolis even though the District it is administratively under the Afigya Kwabre District and hence the District  responsible for the provision of Police station and accommodation . She therefore called for data for the project to be collected from the District level other than relying on data from the national level.

She nevertheless lauded the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-GHANA), Hewlett and Flora Packard Foundation and Resource Link Foundation-Ghana for the project.

She said data from the project is a social accountability tool which must be embraced by both state and non-state actors to ensure improvement in service delivery in the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies across the country.

On his part, the country Director of Resource Link Foundation-Ghana, Mr. Christopher charged citizens to take active part in the development process at the District level.  

He said it is only through effective participation of citizens and above all holding state officials accountable that service delivery will meet the desired standards.

He was optimistic that the interface meeting and the I AM AWARE data as well as other knowledge participants gained will be put to good use to improve upon social accountability and consequently  effective and efficient service delivery in the District.

The interface meeting brought participants from religious bodies, Trades Associations, Youth Groups, Market Women, People with Disabilities among, Assembly and Unit Committee members others  and state actors from the Ghana Health Service, Ghana Education Service, Ghana Police Service and officials of the Afigya Kwabre District Assembly.

Joyce Baffour Mensah/Ghanadistricts.com