Dr Callistus Mahama, Head of Local Government Service Secretariat, has called for inter-service and inter-sector collaboration of departments to ensure a coordinated preparation and implementation of District Development Plans.

Dr Mahama said decentralized development planning could be effective only if the planning was done holistically and involved all agencies connected with district-level development and district-level services delivery, whether those agencies were devolved or de-concentrated.

He said this on Wednesday at a workshop for in-service collaboration in implementing L.I.1961, Schedule 1, towards administrative decentralisation in Accra.

Dr Mahama said administrative decentralization involved the creation of competence at the level of the decentralized units by the transfer or recruitment of officials to those units to perform the transferred functions.

He said inter-Service and inter-sector collaboration and cooperation becomes inevitable whenever a decentralization policy involved a programme of both devolution and de-concentration.

Mr Mahama said the country’s decentralization policy involved such a programme in which devolved sectors and departments and de-concentrated sectors and departments are co-existing side-by-side at the district level.

He said the devolved and the de-concentrated departments, services and sectors were expected to deliver services to the people in the district, and work to improve the standard of living of the people in the district.