The Volta Regional minister, Dr Archibald Yao Letsa, has expressed optimism over the first placement of the region in the latest local government service poll.

According to him, while the region has performed well, there is still more room for improvement.

His comments follow Volta region emerging number one in the latest Local Government Service performance report across the 16 regions.

The monitoring and verification exercise was for the year 2020 based on the Local Government Service’s Performance Contract of the 16 Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs) and the 260 Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).

“What worked for us is teamwork and supervision. They were the key indicators that worked for us. We set an agenda for ourselves as a team and we signed a performance contract and that became our Bible for us to work with”.

That notwithstanding, Dr Letsa expressed the need for MMDA to perform better in the next assessment and evaluation. This is because, the first MMDA for the Region ranked 59 whereas the Volta regional RCC ranked first.

“What we’re looking forward to doing is to make sure assemblies perform better… It will be our goal this year, 2021, to make sure that seven to ten of our assemblies are in the top fifty when the assessment of 2021 is done in 2022”.

Challenges impeding RCCs performance

Citing some challenges encountered with the regional coordinating council, Dr Letsa explained that if financial resources and logistics are provided, the obstacles will be surmountable.

“The challenges are generic. We have some challenges with resources to improving on the monitoring of our assemblies. We propose to do monitoring of the assemblies every quarter and we do that religiously. If we are able to get more resources, we’ll be able to do much better.

“Our role as RCC is monitor, evaluate and supervise the district assemblies. So, we should be paying very regular visits to them to make sure that they are doing what they are expected to do”.

On his part, the Head of Local government Service, Dr Nana Ato Arthur, explained that the Volta regional coordinating council assessed by the Regional minister signed a performance contract.

By virtue of the contract, Dr Arthur stressed that this “makes performance a shared responsibility”.

Rewarding MMDAs and RCCs

Touching on whether regions that had a lot of assemblies to cater for suffered some challenges, Dr Arthur noted that, it wouldn’t “be a criteria for the evaluation of the RCC”.

Dr Arthur further revealed that the performance of the MMDA doesn’t “necessarily” have an impact on the RCC assessment. However, he maintained that the “impact of the RCC may trigger down to the MMDA”.

Furthermore, he concerted to the fact that there are rewards for outstanding performers at the regional level.

“The regional coordinating council, this is the first time we are assessing them… but for the MMDA’s we give them awards. Last year for instance, Asokore Mampong in the Ashanti region topped. We gave them laptops, table tops, printers, something that will make them work better. We also had a kind of a program that paid for workshop, training programs and also recognition”.