Stakeholders in Ghana's infrastructure sector must remain committed to promoting citizen participation to ensure accountability, transparency, and value for money, the Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEAL) Officer of CoST Sekondi-Takoradi, Aziz Mahmoud, has advocated.
He said ensuring value for money remained essential in disclosures, independent reviews, verification of information, and assurances under CoST. Mr. Mahmoud added that social accountability was another crucial factor.
"That is why we have within our midst citizens from the eight municipalities in the Western Region and the Multi-Stakeholder Working Group (MSG), made up of government, private sector, and civil society. CoST work has made a lot of significant savings across the globe," he stated.
He made these remarks at a workshop held on Wednesday in Takoradi for the conduct of a project assurance survey in the Western Region, as part of the CoST Infrastructure Transparency Initiative aimed at fostering greater transparency, accountability, and participation in Ghana's infrastructure sector.
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Participants from District Assemblies and civil society were taken through the Independent Review Process (IRP), implementation plans, and timelines.
Mr. Mahmoud said CoST would now move from the sub-national to the national-level programme to introduce tools and standards that would impact public infrastructure delivery, noting that Ghana's legal and regulatory framework aligned with CoST principles.
He disclosed that the 40-year Ghana Infrastructure Plan (GIP) required about $1.1 trillion in cumulative investment to support a GDP per capita of $60,000 by 2057 in order to close the country's infrastructure gap. Housing and social infrastructure alone, he said, accounted for about $900 billion. He added that the Ministry of Finance had recently indicated that Ghana needed to invest $37 billion annually over the next three decades for new infrastructure and maintenance.
Mr. Mahmoud told participants that governance arrangements were crucial to ensure that resources for the GIP were adequate. He emphasised the importance of legal regulations promoting transparency in public infrastructure delivery and said duty bearers should have no difficulty being transparent.
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"That's why citizens should hold us accountable when it comes to our stewardship," he said. He also stressed the need for government entities to involve citizens in discussions on infrastructure information to "ensure that infrastructure is suitable and it meets their needs and aspirations."
Governance, he highlighted, was essential to optimise allocation and expenditure.
"The GIP also highlighted that without taking necessary governance arrangements in trying to tighten inefficiency and mismanagement in public infrastructure delivery, the money will not be enough to meet our needs -- that is why transparency is very important to our work -- we have serious issues when it comes to how we deliver public infrastructure," he added.
The Team Leader and Lecturer at the Faculty of Built and Natural Environment at Takoradi Technical University (TTU), Dr. Matthew Kwaw Somiah, explained that the independent review of the projects would be carried out with planning officers and works engineers from the assemblies (procuring entities) to assess disclosures and determine whether they complied with the law.
Dr. Somiah said the projects would focus on water and sanitation as well as non-water and sanitation initiatives, assessing whether they were completed or ongoing and "whether we are making progress in information disclosure."
Providing an overview, the CoST Sekondi-Takoradi Manager, Isaac Aidoo, explained that CoST, an Open Government Partnership (OGP) initiative, promoted collaboration between the public and private sectors. He said that since 2019, when the programme began, a total of 82 projects had been published by eight assemblies.
