The workshop is to sensitise all heads of decentralised departments in the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies on the new Local Government Act, Act 936. Mrs Sethina Annang Danquah, the Senior Assistant Registrar, ILGS, said the workshop was a nationwide campaign, which started in June with coordinating directors and assembly members, then later to the sub-structures within the assemblies.

She said the institute saw the need for the decentralised departments to also have an insight about the new Act and its features and also try to come up with some of the challenges they might face during its implementation.

She said the idea of the sensitisation workshop was also to get participants to come out with what could be done in the future towards the implementation of the Act, and also see how best they could work together with other departments within the districts to champion the course of the decentralisation process.

Mrs Annang Danquah said similar workshops had been done for all the nine other regions and Accra was the last region to benefit with participants compromising directors of health, education, agriculture and social welfare and community development from all 16 districts in the Region.

Mr Felix Agyei Anokye, Lecturer, ILGS, said the programme had become imperative as a way of integrating the various departments in the district assembly system and that the various heads were critical to the development of the local areas.

He said the programme also created the opportunity for the heads to see their strategic roles in the assembly and also to know how they fit into the scheme of things in district assembly decision making. He urged the heads to make it a habit of meeting regularly to develop strategic plans for their various districts adding; “The Act is new and would be used to operationalise the functions of the assembly.”