People’s Dialogue, a non-governmental organisation, has facilitated a stakeholder meeting to help enlighten the people of Ashaiman Municipality on the application of “Taarifa” mobile phone app for monitoring service delivery in the area.

The education follows an injection of $150 million into an ICT platform project by the World Bank to help the people of the Municipality to use the mobile app to track effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery by agencies.

As part of the sensitisation activities, the People’s Dialogue organised the meeting in partnership with the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and the World Bank, to empower the people use the app to improve accountability.

“Taarifa”, a Swahili language which means report, describe, account and compose, is a Smartphone based ICT platform adopted by the World Bank for enabling citizens-based monitoring of service delivery.

The app serves as a tool for monitoring water and sanitation service delivery, monitoring project resource allocation and utilisation, monitoring the management operation and maintenance of facilities, and addressing critical problems facing the citizenry regarding water and sanitation.

Mr John Annan, Project Officer of People’s Dialogue, who took the people through the process of using the app, explained that one needed to send a text message on an issue of concern or take a picture of a physical situation and send it to a number.

With the app, he said, community members could report on tertiary pipelines, bust pipeline, pipelines found in drainage systems, and toilet sewage system connected to running gutters and leakages from toilet septic tanks.

“Problems such as unbearable stench from public toilet facilities, over flown waste bins, indiscriminate disposal of solid waste around waste bin sites can also be reported,” he said.

He noted that the “Taarifa” platform would help improve social accountability and enable communities to have full information on the role and responsibilities of duty bearers in relation to water, sanitation and hygiene service delivery.