PLANNING C'SSION EMBARKS ON CAPACITY BUILDING (PAGE 23, NOV 27)

The National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) has embarked on a nation-wide capacity-building exercise on planning guidelines for all the 170 metropolitan/municipal and district assemblies.
The programme is to enable the assemblies to translate national policies into implementable activities that can reduce poverty in the various districts.
It is also aimed at sensitising the assemblies to national planning strategies.
The first training workshop has taken place in the Central Region. It attracted four participants each from the 17 districts in the region, made up of MMDCs, district co-ordinating directors, planning officers and district budget analysts.
The two-day workshop, which was funded by the NDPC, the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Children’s Fund was also attended by representatives from the regional coordinating directors, regional economic planning officers and their assistants.
The Central Regional Planning Officer, Mr Frank Obeng-Dapaah, in his opening remarks, emphasised the importance of the workshop and asked the MMDCEs and staff of the assemblies to involve all stakeholders in the planning process.
Mr Kobina Okyere, a Deputy Director of the NDPC and a resource person, said the Government was pursuing the Vision 2020 Development Agenda, the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategies (GPRS) one and two, all aimed at achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
He said those programmes targeted poverty reduction, job and wealth creation to enable the country attain middle-income status.
Mr Okyere said the medium-term national development policy framework which would replace the GPRS two would address the economic imbalances, restabilise the economy and place it on a path of sustained growth and poverty reduction.
The Cape Coast Metropolitan Planning Officer, Mr Justice Amoah, said since planning was a collective responsibility of all those who worked with the assemblies, it behoved them to make the necessary inputs for effective planning.
Mr Amoah called on chief executives to support planning officers with the necessary resources to enable them to discharge their duties efficiently.
The Municipal Chief Executive for Effutu, Nii Ephraim, said the workshop had made them understand the challenges facing planning officers and budget analysts and expressed the hope that the assemblies would assist them with the needed logistics to enable them work efficiently.