On Thursday, October 24, 2024, some youth and women from the Bongo District of the Upper East Region participated for the first time in the assembly’s composite budget hearing.
This is because many youth and women knew little about the processes leading to the preparation and presentation of budgets at the district level until the intervention by Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana.
Their participation comes about following the implementation of a project dubbed the “Peace Building Fund Project”, which is being implemented by Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana with support from the United Nations Population Fund(UNFPA) in the Bongo District, Garu, and Bawku West District.
It is being implemented in three regions: the Upper East, Upper West, and North East. It aims to address localized conflict and vulnerabilities to violent extremism.
As part of the activities, some youth and women were identified and trained on budget analysis and preparation hence the decision to facilitate their participation to allow them to have firsthand information regarding what is in the budget to hold the local assembly accountable.
Speaking to Dreamz News Dominic Anarigide, a Project Officer with Youth Harvest Foundation Ghana stated that facilitating the participation of the youth, women, and community allows them to have firsthand information about what has been captured in the budget and allows them to utilize the training to be able to hold leaders accountable.
“This is now to allow them to take part in the budget hearing and look at what is being done and to have the opportunity to make inputs into the budgets. They will also be able to hold leaders accountable so that duty bearers will be awake so that development can occur,” he emphasized.
Participating in the Composite Budget hearing, the Queen Mother of Bongo-Feo, Pognaba Felicia Agamboka, explained that this was the first time she had participated in the budget hearing. She, therefore, thanked the foundation and its partners for the opportunity to participate in the exercise.
She is not too happy about the poor representation of women at the district level as the Bongo District Assembly currently has only three women appointed as assembly members.
According to her, there is a need for adherence to the 30% allocation for the appointment of women to the assembly.
“I have never witnessed any budget hearing like this. Today is my first time and I have seen that the level of women representation at the assembly level is very poor and you know that women are the majority so how come very few women are involved? But my takeaway is that we have to do the lobbying but also, there should be adherence to the 30% allocation for the appointment of women at the assembly level,” she urged.
Meanwhile, the Bongo District Budget Officer, Batholomew Kambonga, expressed gratitude to the Youth Harvest Foundation for the collaboration and facilitation of the participation of community leaders, youth, and women. He sees the collaboration as an opportunity to create awareness and lead to more community support since they can now serve as ambassadors to foster development.
“They are helping to empower our communities and after here, they are helping us to have a town hall meeting and that will help in creating awareness, sensitize our people and when we all understand what we are doing, it will sustain the gains we are all making,” he stressed.
