Researcher urges MMDAs to build capacity to deal with slums

Thursday 16th August, 2012

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Accra, Aug. 16, GNA – A research fellow on Thursday called for a capacity building exercise for local authorities as a means to strengthen political accountability and governance and to deal with growing challenges of slum communities in Ghana.     

Mr Jeffrey W. Paller, a Fellow of the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD), Ghana, who made the call at a roundtable organised in Accra, stressed that the capacity of sub-metropolitan and assemblies needed to be built to strengthen governance structure and accountability.     

He was presenting his research findings on three slum communities in Accra.     

They were Old Fadama, popularly referred to as Sodom and Gomorrah, Ashaiman and Ga Mashie.     

Mr Paller said contrary to popular beliefs that lack of urban planning, culture, indiscipline, poverty and failure of new liberalization and structural adjustment policies were causes of growing slums, evidence from the grassroots revealed a different picture.     

He said considerable differences existed in the levels of political accountability and governance among the slum communities.     

“These differences are not only as a result of historical conditions, existing political accountability mechanisms, informal institutions of leadership and community organisations, but also of State society linkages,” he said.     

Mr Paller said Ghanaians were naturally good communicators and recommended that open dialogue form of communication mechanism should be employed to build trust to strengthen political accountability and governance in the slums.     

He called for transparency in sharing of goods, legal recognition and land tenure security as well as creative solutions to slum upgrading as other means of strengthening political accountability and governance in the slum communities.   

Mr Paller defined a slum as a heavily populated urban area, which had sub-standard housing and space, inadequate access to safe water, sanitation and other infrastructure, poor structural quality of housing, over-crowding and insecure residential status.     

CDD, Ghana, is an independent, non partisan and, non-profit organisation aimed at promoting society and governance structure based on the rule of law, appropriate checks on the power of State and integrity in public administration.

 

GNA