Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr O.B Amoah, has charged graduates of the Institute of Local Government Studies to develop creative solutions to the myriad challenges confronting the country’s decentralisation efforts.

The Deputy Minister made the call when he delivered the keynote address at the 5th congregation of ILGS on November 21, 2020, on the theme: “Advancing democratic governmental local governance in Ghana: the role of academia”. 

Mr Amoah said: “The world today is knowledge-based. It was in view of this that throughout your studies, you were taught critical innovative and sustainable skills required to make the necessary interventions with the development of our local governance system. 

“You are, therefore, in a better stead now to produce the necessary solutions to the myriad of problems that are confronting Ghana’s decentralisation efforts”. 

“As already indicated, there are still serious issues about political decentralisation, resource mobilisation and human resource capital in some MMDAs. These challenges put a lot of responsibilities on your shoulders as graduands of this institute to find the appropriate solutions to them”, he said.

For his part, the Director of the Institute for Local Government Studies, Dr Nicholas Awortwi, implored the graduates to use their acquired knowledge and skill to better the lot of persons especially in deprived communities. 

He also noted that there are some new exciting programmes set to be rolled out by his outfit. 

According to him: “ILGS is working in partnership with the Office of the Head of Local Government Service to launch the Enhanced Scheme of Service Training Programme. The programme will introduce a more structured, coherent and career oriented training that will equip and sharpen the professional knowledge, skills and attitudes of about 20,000 Local Government staff”.

He added: “ILGS has developed 89 training models that will be used to train 16 professional classes of the local government service such as administrators, human resource managers, finance budget and rating officers”. 

Speaking on behalf of his colleague graduands, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Nsawam Adoagyir, Mr Frank Annor Dompreh, expressed gratitude to the teaching and non-teaching staff of the Institute and pledged their commitment to putting their knowledge to good use.

In all, 145 graduands comprising 75 per cent males and 25 per cent females were awarded Masters Certificates in various programmes. Fifty-two obtained MSc Environmental Science Policy and Management, 24 MSc Local Government, 48 MA local government Administration and Organisation while 20 bagged MSc in Local Government Financial Management.