Hajia Mahama said this at the signing ceremony of the 2018 Performance Contract between the 10 regional ministers and regional coordinating directors in Accra on Friday. She said the priority areas of the Contract include local revenue generation, education, infrastructural development, social protection, and institutional capacity development.

She said President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s commitment to positioning Ghana Beyond Aid was driven by initiatives such as the “One District–One-Factory,” “One Constituency One Million Dollars,” and “Planting for Food and Jobs,” and that they would not see the light without strong local governance institutions to drive them.

“This is mainly because the point of implementation of these projects is at the metropolitan, municipal and district assembly levels, which you supervise, and it is, therefore, timely that the service sets realistic and achievable targets aimed at contributing towards the implementation of these flagship projects,” she said.

She urged the directors to use their experience over the years to guide and support the ministers to succeed, and said government was appreciative of the numerous initiatives undertaken to drive administrative decentralisation and ensure effective delivery of quality service and would continue to support their efforts.

Hajia Mahama reminded both parties that it was their collective responsibility to ensure their success, urging the regional minister to support the directors to deliver on targets. Dr Nana Ato Arthur, the Head of Local Service, said the signing of the Performance Contract was necessary to create a committed workforce for the performance of tasks geared towards the development of every part of the regions.

He said it also marked a new beginning of building strong institutional capacity since the Performance Management System (PMS) provided feedback on the performance of staff and institutions in achieving results.

Dr Arthur said the PMS was categorized into four phases namely; the performance planning, progress reviews, review and appraisal and reporting and decision making phases. He noted that as more power and resources were being decentralised to the local level, it had become increasingly important that the local government system was strengthened in its efforts to become more accountable to the Central Government as well as the citizenry.

Dr Arthur said the PMS, if effectively implemented, would afford the various departments in the regional coordinating councils the opportunity to work to become more accountable, and in the process move the regions forward, adding that non performing departments would also be identified.

Mrs Bridget Katsriku, the Chairman of the Public Service Commission, said the signing had become institutionalised in the Local Government Service (LGS) as a contract of establishing expectations and accountabilities for meeting a set of standard of execution of excellence and the consequence for not meeting them.

She said it was aimed at supporting high level leadership and accountabilities across the public service including the LGS and also to serve the purpose of documenting high level outcomes being sought by the respective RCC’s on government priorities, policies and key reform themes.

Mrs Katsriku said the contracts did not only set targets for institutions’ specific outputs, outcomes and deliverables, which deal with meeting key policy objectives of the Government, but also the general operational and administrative deliverables, which were vital for performance efficiency and effectiveness.

She said the contracts were indicative of the planned development programmes for each of the regions and urged the directors and coordinators to see it as a tool for assessing their performance not only annually, but as an ongoing and periodic assessment for the progress of the governance of their respective regions.