16th position of Savannah region, a clear indication of gross incompetence by Regional Minister, DCEs

The District League Table was established in 2014 and jointly produced by Unicef and other civil society organisations in collaboration with government agencies. The District League Table is Ghana's national tool for raising awareness of district development and promoting social accountability at the local level.

By social accountability, the District league table seeks to better connect citizens and the state, provide information and feedback on expectations and monitor the progress of development.

Regrettably, the then "Gonjalands" now Savannah Region has once again failed to meet the universal standards of delivering development to the good people of the region per the rankings captured in the 2021 District League Table.

A situation that can partly be attributed to the technical inefficiency of the Regional Minister and his DCEs who are so much tuned to political gymnastics and funfairs rather than supervising the delivery of development to the good people of the region.

In general, the sectors and indicators used to compile the 2021 District League Table include Education, Health, Nutrition, Water, Sanitation, and Governance. These sectors and indicators are the fibre of survival and development of every person living everywhere on planet earth.

Savannah Region out of 16 regions in Ghana was ranked 16th translating into the last position on the ranking scale.

Under the Education sector, the Savannah Region ranked last with 14.5%, a disgraceful drop from the previous year's unpardonable score of 15.5%. Sawla-Tuna-Kalba District embarrassingly was captured amongst the 10 lowest performing districts in Education in the entire country.

The Sanitation sector saw the Savannah Region once again ranked last amongst the 16 regions. The North Gonja District, the District of the Dean of Savannah DCEs disappointingly ranked 258 amongst 261 MMDAs barely escaping the last position.

The Dean of Savannah DCEs led the North Gonja District to score a fizzle mark of 23.10% translating into 256 out of 261 districts. North-East Gonja scored 22% falling right behind North Gonja in the Energy sector rankings. Unsurprisingly, the Savannah Region again scored 16th out of 16 regions in the Energy sector (Last).

Under the governance sector, Savannah Region is ranked 13th out of 16 regions with East Gonja captured amongst the 15 lowest-ranking districts in Ghana.

Out of the six (6) principal sectors captured in the 2021 District League Table, the Savannah Region scored last (16th) in three (3) being Sanitation, Education, and Energy. The Savannah Region also ranked 13th in governance, 15th in water, and 11th in nutrition out of 16 regions.

The performance of the Savannah Region and the individual districts on the District League Table is not only shameful, embarrassing, disappointing, and unpardonable but says a lot about the leadership approach and technical acumen of the Regional Minister and his DCEs.

Accordingly, the District League Table is a simple ranking tool of progress toward delivering development and key basic services in each of Ghana's districts.

In essence, low-ranked regions and districts failed to provide the right leadership, basic conditions, logistics, and technical direction in each of the sectors to score maximum marks of 100%.

The consistently low performance of the Savannah Region should be a course of concern for all stakeholders especially the Regional Minister and his DCEs. Even though the region did not rank last (16th) in Governance, Water and Nutrition sectors, the 13th, 15th and 11th ratings respectively in these sectors out of 16 regions demand that the Regional Minister and his DCEs mature from the bubbles of political hallucinations and overhyped praise singing they have enjoyed over the years from their footsoldiers and work assiduously to deliver development to the good people of the Savannah Region.

Three Basic Suggestions To The Incompetent Regional Minister

1. The position of the Savannah Region as a corporate entity exists to provide services to the people and to attract development partners to augment in achieving the mandate of MMDAs hence the regional minister should accept the responsibility to show leadership by steering DCEs to improve net enrolment at primary schools and completion rate at JHS level.

2. He must institute regimes to promote exclusive breastfeeding and to declare MMDAs as ODF and the training on records keeping and information management should be enhanced.

3. The Regional Coordinating Council should initiate capacity-building training for staff of MMDAs on reporting on set development indicators and should institute exchange programmes between staff of performing regions and districts to allow for knowledge transfer.