Findings of a report by the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) show that the implementation of some pro-poor projects under the $1 million per constituency promised by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) during the 2016 electioneering campaign lack local content.
The report monitored the implementation of that campaign promise, which later became government policy dubbed ‘Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme’ (IPEP) and found that contractors working on the various IPEP projects were not from the beneficiary communities.
This finding of the report of the IPEP Tracker, is captured under ‘Level of community involvement and transparency in IPEP project implementation’ – which is one of four categories into which the findings of the report were grouped.
The report also found that there is “low community engagement in project selection and prioritisation: Decisions are usually taken at the national level and the district level by few officials such as Members of Parliament and District Chief Executives. Further, the communities indicate that the use of local labour was very minimal.”
Other findings of the report, which was made public on Wednesday, September 16, 2020 in Accra, include the following:
- Minimal or no community involvement in project initiation and implementation at the district level.
- Very low community awareness of IPEP project in the constituencies/district: Majority of informants in the beneficiary communities’ report of not being aware that the projects are been provided under the IPEP or the $1 million per constituency program.
IPEP Tracker
The NPP promised in its 2016 elections manifesto to allocate the Ghana Cedi equivalent of $1 million to each of the 275 constituencies.
The promise dubbed the “Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP)” seeks to enhance capital infrastructure provision at the district/constituency level as a means to accelerate growth, create jobs and reduce poverty, particularly in rural and deprived communities.
Upon assumption of office, the NPP Government established the Ministry for Special Development Initiatives (MSDI) in February 2017 to implement the IPEP. It also set up three Development Authorities (DAs) and their governing boards as well as an inter-Ministerial Oversight Committee.
Also, the government set up a ten-member ad-hoc committee to undertake constituency infrastructure needs assessment.
After that, the MSDI in 2018 began selected government priority infrastructure projects across all the 275 constituencies under the IPEP
CDD-Ghana in 2017 launched the ‘IPEP Tracker’ project to monitor the implementation of IPEP.
The overall goal of the IPEP Tracker project is to contribute to efforts to eliminate corruption by ensuring transparency and accountability in the implementation of the IPEP.
