CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT IN ENACTING BY LAWS

A CASE STUDY OFASAKRAKA ELECTORAL AREA

IN THE KWAHU SOUTH DISTRICTGHANA

Consulting Stakeholders

The Kwahu South District Assembly is in the process of gazetting its by laws as a district. It is the responsibility of elected representatives to make input into the final document before it is gazetted. A by- law is a rule or law established by an organization or community to regulate itself, as allowed or provided for by some higher authority. The higher authority, generally a legislature or some other government body, establishes the degree of control that the by-laws may exercise. I together with an elected representative of the Asakraka electoral area begun a tedious task of engaging the populace in enacting their own by laws for onward submission to the district.

KEY ACTORS

The main actors for this project had been myself and the elected representative for the electoral area. I work as an administrator in the District Assembly and i provided the technical advice. The Chiefs, Area Councils, Unit Committee Members, Opinion Leaders and Religious bodies are some of the key stakeholders for this laudable project. We are doing this with a local CBO #YALILEARNS who showed interest in the project from the onset. The target audience has been community members ranging from 18 years and above. In total we distributed twenty five questionnaires to the various stakeholders and had twenty two returned to us. We had some stakeholders making useful suggestions that were not captured in the questionnaire on separate sheets

HOW DOES IT WORK(TOOLS)

The literacy rate in the electoral area is very low and most of our activities were done in the local language. We also made use of the community radio and the don do (a local device used to send messages across) to educate the citizenry. These tools have been very effective and we still use it to let the citizens know what is going on. The next stage was to meet the populace together and present their findings and agree on the laws to be submitted to the Assembly for the final gazetting. This was done last Friday and it was a mammoth gathering of all people in the community. We themed it the General Assembly for the people. We exchanged ideas and the citizens were involved in enacting their own by laws.

RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES

The risk that we anticipated was not getting the needed support from the populace but we were proven wrong. The approach we used helped us a lot. We first of all contacted the various stakeholders to inform and educate them about the project and took their inputs too. The challenges has been lack of funds. This project has been sponsored from our own pockets with no help from any outfit. It has drained us a lot. The other challenge has been the lack of support from the District Assembly.

EVALUATION OF SUCCESS

It is our hope that the final recommendations will be accepted by the General Assembly for gazetting. That will be the first indicator of our success. The chiefs and people of the community have also agreed to be governed by the bye laws even though the Assembly is yet to gazette it to make it a legal document.

THANK YOU