The Kassena-Nankana Municipal Director of the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) in the Upper East Region, Madam Felicia Ajongbah has urged residents of Gaani, a community in the Municipality to adopt Knowledge, Attitude, Skills and Aspirations (KASA) model for effective social auditing.

She said social auditing was a flagship programme of the Commission, and noted that as civic educators, they reflected on issues that affected the development of the nation, and adopted appropriate measures to enhance citizens’ participation, transparency and accountability for good governance in Ghana.

“Our mission here is to discuss social auditing with you and to make community members demand accountability from duty bearers,” Madam Ajongbah said at a social auditing programme organised at the instance of the Commission.

She said social auditing was a constitutionally mandated responsibility for all citizens to assess public policies, programmes and projects in order to influence the process, outcomes and impacts of budgetary allocation for the implementation of programmes.

“Our goal is to empower participants to become effective social auditors among their local government functionaries as the 1992 constitution empowers the citizenry to demand credible performance from duty bearers.”

She explained that “The key difference between development and social audit was that social audit focused on the neglected issues of social impact, whilst development had a broader focus including; environment and economic issues such as efficiency of projects or programmes.”

Madam Ajongbah said social auditing encouraged community participation and trained communities on participatory local planning, developed human resource and social capital, and also benefited disadvantaged groups.

Upon deliberations among members of the community, they outlined several challenges they faced in various sectors, and were led by officials of the NCCE to form a five-member Social Audit monitoring committee to monitor the implementation of the community action plan.

The monitoring committee comprised the Chief of the area, Assembly member, representatives each for women and youth, including; a person living with disability.

Mr Pontius Pilate Baba Apaabey, the Upper East Regional Director of the NCCE, emphasized that the NCCE was an independent non-partisan organisation mandated to educate and encourage members of the public to defend the constitution at all times against all forms of abuses and violations.

He said the Commission observed that citizens did not participate effectively in the governance process of their electoral areas, communities and country at large, “that is why we are here to talk to you about social auditing,” he added.

Mr Apaabey was hopeful that the five-members monitoring committee would participate actively to achieve its intended purpose, and called on community members to cooperate with the committee to develop the area.