On Friday, September 14, 2007 the National African Peer Review Governing Council (NAPRM-GC) took another giant step. in bringing governance to the door steps of ordinary Ghanaians when it inaugurated the first APRM District Oversight Committee (DOC) at the South BIRIM District Assembly Hall.
The inauguration of the APRM District Oversight Committee in the BIRIM South District marked the beginning of the decentralization of the monitoring and evaluation of the NPOA at the district level. The DOC, which is a microcosm of the NAPRM-GC, is consistent with NAPRM-GC resolve to deepen the involvement of civil society in the monitoring and evaluation of the implementation while educating and informing members about the APRM process.
In his welcome address, the Chairman for the occasion and District Chief Executive of the South BIRIM District, Mr. Frank Busumtwi thanked the NAPRM-GC for selecting his district out of the then 138 and; now 166 districts in the country for the first inauguration. He recounted the process Ghana had gone through from the accession stage through the country review exercise to the implementation of the NPOA, the monitoring and evaluation and finally the APRM DOC concept.
He noted that the BIRIM South District had made tremendous progress in many of the APRM areas of interest. He reported progress in the fight against corruption, gender mainstreaming at the district assembly, implementation of the national youth employment programme as well as the National Health Insurance Scheme. guided by the principles of openness and all-inclusiveness. He reminded them of their non-partisan nature and warned that any member who exhibited partisan tendencies would be removed from the committee. He said, with two years of training, sensitization and capacity building for prospective members of the DOCS on their roles and requirements for selection, the beneficiary Community Based Organizations (COBS), Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Faith Based Organizations (FBOs) including National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) officials, the DOCS must live up to expectation.
The DOCS will need to follow the example of the NAPRM-GC, by remaining neutral, open and objective in all their dealings, he concluded. After the inauguration, the NAPRM-GC Principal Programme Officer, Mr. Sam Cudjoe, presented highlights of the findings of a survey undertaken by the members of the committee in the four thematic areas of the APRM.
The highlights so presented formed the basis of the open forum to get stakeholders’ present to validate the findings. The forum turned out to be the high point of the programme as stakeholders took turns to debate the findings. While some stakeholders agreed with and confirmed the findings, others expressed their reservations.
About 233 participants attended the inauguration. They recommended an increase in the sample size of the survey undertaken by the DOC, to make it more wide spread enough in future exercises. As of December 2007, only eight DOCS had been inaugurated, leaving 158 for inauguration in 2008.
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