Planning Commission holds seminar for stakeholders

Atimpoku(E/R), Jan. 17, GNA- The National Development Planning Commission(NDPC) has not prepared Legislative Instruments to ensure that District, Municipal and Metropolitan Assemblies comply with planning requirements 19 after the enactment of the law establishing the Commission.This was contained in a speech read on behalf of Mr Paul Victor Obeng, Chairman of the NDPC, at the opening of a stakeholders’ meeting involving Local Government officers from the Eastern and Volta regions to gather their inputs into the drafting of the National Development Planning Regulation at Akosombo on Thursday. The meeting is being attended by Municipal and District Chief Executives (MDCEs) from the Eastern and Volta regions. He said the Commission had decided to take steps to have the requisite Legislative Instruments (LIs) drafted and enacted to be able to deliver on its mandate to bring optimum benefit to all Ghanaians and to effectively implement decentralized planning. Mr Obeng said the decision was derived from the 2012 Manifesto of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) which promised to take steps to complete the implementation of the National Decentralisation Action Plan. He appealed to the stakeholders to contribute their experience and expertise to have a positive impact on the draft LIs. Ms Helen Adjoa Ntoso, the Eastern Regional Minister, expressed worry that the absence of planning regulations to guide the decentralized planning system had negatively affected Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) in matching resource allocation to their Annual Action Plans (AAPs) which they had prepared. She said some districts achieved less than 60 per cent implementation of their Action Plans due to the absence of the regulations. Ms Ntoso commended the NDPC for the workshop, adding that, the regulations were coming at the right time to enable the MMDAs to match their resource allocation to their respective AAPs.GNA Read Full Story