Seven hundred and ninety staff of the Land Use and Spatial Planning Committee (LUSPA), formerly Town and Country Planning Department, at the sub-national level from the Civil Service has been transferred to the Local Government Service (LGS).
As part of the transfer, 81 percent of the recruits would operate from the offices of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) whilst the other 19 percent would be sent to the office of the Regional Co-ordinating Councils (RCCs).
Head of the Civil Service, Nana Kwesi Agyekum Dwamena, at the event, asked the newly recruited staff of the Local Government Service to discharge their duty with professionalism to ensure effective service delivery.
He said Local Government staffs were pivotal in the socio-economic development at the local levels by serving as a channel between the people and the Government.
“I know that the LGS play significant role in the implementation of policies and programmes of government at the local levels. This, therefore, requires that the right calibre of staff to do the work are available so that the mandate of the Service can be properly executed,” he said.
Head of the Local Government Service, Dr Nana Ato Arthur, explained that the sustainability and resilience of MMDAs depended on the integration of development policies and spatial dimension in the design of national, regional and district level interventions with all stakeholders.
In order to achieve the aforementioned goal, the agency was making sure that Performance contracts for RCCs and MMDAs would contain the indicators that established and integrated the Physical Planning Department and all other departments.
“There will be continuous sensitization on the Inter-Service and Sectoral Collaboration and Cooperation System (ISCCS) and the monitoring of the integration of the departments,” he said.
Dr Arthur stated that the Local Governance Act, 2016 (Act 936) had elevated the Human Resource Units of the Service to a Departmental status to give it more power to operate.
He, therefore, called on all RCCs and MMDAs to take note and act accordingly adding that administrative instructions with detailed modalities would follow soon.
“Progress is also being made on the decentralisation of the Health and Education Sectors and the migration of Local Government Inspectors into the Internal Audit Class of the Service as provided in the Local Governance Act,” he stated.