Accra, June 1, GNA - Vice President John Dramani Mahama on Monday, tasked the Institute of Local Government Studies (ILGS) to take a commanding role in instituting innovative programmes that would lead into a phenomenal improvement in the standards of living of people at the grassroots.

"If national development and high standards of living are going to be achieved, the district assemblies' should be able to achieve them in their localities", the Vice President said, while outlining the role the ILGS is expected to play, in providing the intellectual discourse for development at the local level.

Speaking at the launch of the 10th anniversary of the institute in Accra on Monday, Vice President Mahama requested the ILGS, to let the celebration be used as an "invitation to the entire nation to reflect on our collective decentralization agenda", in order to chart the way forward.

Such a move, he pointed out, would allow for the correction of past failures that had led to the near stagnation of the decentralisation programme.

The ILGS was established under the first National Democratic Congress (NDC) regime, with the object of providing an intellectual architecture to help the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), as well as other decentralised agencies to design policies, that would promote sustainable, participatory and pro-poor development. The implementation of the decentralization policy was widely acknowledged and Ghana became a centre of excellence for many African countries for her sterling democratic experiment, at the local level. However, the failure to devolve power from the centre has hampered the performance of the MMDAs, a situation the Vice President affirmed the commitment of the ruling NDC to correct.

He observed that although decentralisation was a key factor in helping to unleash the energies of the people for accelerated growth, the poor development of governance structures, especially over the last 10 years, had stagnated rather than help bolster the intended growth envisaged. While commending Management of the institute for the sterling performance despite some difficulties encountered in their 10 year existence, Vice President Mahama charged them to continue to develop home-grown solutions to sanitation, management and revenue generation difficulties faced by the MMDAs.

He said the ILGS and the MMDAs must work together to ensure that the "power to the people" concept, enshrined in the local government architecture is effected by making the people active participants in the development of their communities.

Vice President Mahama expressed the resolve of government to provide sufficient resources in empowering the MMDAs, to make them deliver on their mandate.