The subsidised paid-for training programme cuts across all areas within the local government set up.

They include Administration, Human Resource, Management Information Systems, Engineers, Environmental Health Sanitation Officers, Financial, Budget and Rating Officers, Social Development Officers and Planners. 

Other targeted groups of the training programme include Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Chief Executives, traditional authorities and Assembly Members, and local political leaders. 

The new courses are intended to sharpen the capacities of the targeted groups to deliver efficient local governance to the grassroots. 

Launching the programme in Accra on Wednesday, Deputy Local Government, Rural Development and Decentralisation Minister, OseiBonsuAmoah, said the role assigned to the targeted groups required that they demonstrated critical leadership qualities and hallmarks to enable them address the myriad of challenges confronting the local areas. 

“To this end, this joint initiative of the OHLGS and ILGS in operationalising the enhanced continuous professional development (CPD) training programme for staff of the LGS, is commendable,” Mr OB Amoah, MP, Akuapim South said. 

To him, “if professionalism of staff of the LGS was enhanced through the competency-based scheme of service training, that enables staff to apply new knowledge, skills and attitudes towards achieving the mandates of local governments in response to the needs of the local people, then, a whole new way of linking capacity building to local government performance and improvement in service delivery, local economic transformation and development can be institutionalised.”

In an atmosphere of uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, public managers needed to act more decisively and think more strategically, MrAmoah said, LGS staff must possess a level of foresight, agility, and resilience that their predecessors never imagined.

Committing government to the programme, the Akuapim South MP hinted that promotion within the LGS may be tied to the completion of such competence enhancement programmes in the future. 

Head of the Local Government Service, Dr Nana Ato Arthur, said trends in local governance demanded that staff underwent training periodically to enhance their capacity to deliver. 

“There is no way local governments can up their game in the discharge of their service delivery and development mandates as required without continuous training of their staff,” he added.

He noted that governance and service delivery provision were changing with the times and a forward-looking institution was expected to institute measures to develop its staff in order to keep up with the pace of the times or risk being left far behind and further encouraged would-be beneficiaries to take the programme seriously. 

The Rector of the ILGS, Dr Nicholas Awotwi, said the institute remains focused on the local governance sector both in the short and long term training programmes and would partner with players in the local government setup to develop their competences.