NON-GOVERNMENTAL organisations (NGOs) and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) working to improve the living conditions of residents in Tamale and its surrounding areas have called on the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly’s (TaMA) not to misinterpret their efforts to dialogue with the people on their development needs through forums, as a negative attempt to create disaffection.
They explained that such forums enabled them to prioritise and also avoid duplication of programmes, since many organisations and institutions are sometimes interested in providing the same facility to a particular community, when other communities need them most.
The NGOs further indicated that they went beyond organising such forums to providing some of the needs of the communities, such as potable water systems, sanitation facilities, educational infrastructure, health facilities and community centres, among others.
Making the call following what they described as the TaMA’s unfriendly attitude towards some of the NGOs after it accused them of influencing communities with their donor funding projects and inciting them against the government, the NGOs and CSOs said such allegations, although untrue, made them so apprehensive that they found it difficult continuing their interventions.
Last week, the Co-ordinating Director of the TaMA, Mr John B. Atogiba said it had come to the notice of the assembly that some NGOs were influencing communities with their donor funding projects and inciting them against the government.
He said the assembly was looking out for these NGOs who, in his estimation, were making the government unpopular.
He therefore, threatened that the assembly would “blacklist” such organisations and ban them from operating in the metropolis.
The comments of the Metropolitan Co-ordinating Director followed a citizen’s engagement forum that had been organised in some parts of the metropolis, which created the platform for community members to put forward their concerns and propose interventions that would better their well-being.
In recent times, most of the NGOs have diversified their activities to include citizen’s engagement forums, which seek to bring inhabitants of communities together to discuss development challenges facing them.
This is part of the development paradigm that stresses on the down-to-top approach, where community members are involved in seeking solutions to their development challenges.
This is opposed to the top-to-down approach where leaders design development interventions without consulting the people that such programmes have been designed for, sometimes leading to the failure of such interventions.
It is, therefore, increasingly becoming the demand of the development partners that the citizens must lead the process to find solutions to development challenges they face, which receive funding.
However, the TaMA and some political leaders appear to be uncomfortable with such citizen engagement forums, because they believe that such forums create the platform for residents to chastise the assembly and government for its failures.
The statement of the Co-ordinating director has therefore sparked some uneasiness among the NGOs and CSOs.
The executives of some of the NGOs, who preferred to remain anonymous, told the Daily Graphic that they were saddened by such anti-development stands adopted by the assembly.
“We are simply working to help the assembly fulfil its mandate, because it is their duty to engage their people to find solutions to their problems,” one of the executives stated.
They also explained that such forums help to give the government and its development partners some critical feedback regarding the effectiveness of their interventions.
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