A day’s workshop aimed at building the capacities of Assembly Women to empower them play active roles in budget planning, preparations and implementation monitoring in District Assemblies, has ended in Koforidua, the capital of Eastern Region.

Put together by the Center for Development, Research and Advocacy (CeDRA), with the Department of Gender, Children and Social Protection as collaborators, the training programme received funding from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a German-based Donor Organization.

In a speech read on his behalf, Mr. Antwi-Boasiako Sekyere, the outgoing Eastern Regional Minister, urged Assembly women to develop innovative means of raising revenues to help fight poverty and aid development in their respective communities.

He counseled the Assembly women to show respect to the DCEs and forge a cordial working relationship with the staff of the Assemblies so that, they could always succeed in lobbying for development projects for their areas.

Mr. Sekyere urged the participants to form a caucus to support each other maintain their seats in subsequent elections to scale up the number of women in local governance and hoped that the workshop would enhance the capacity of the participants to perform better.

Mr George K. Dzeto, the Executive Director of CeDRA, was not happy that the number of women elected into the various Assemblies in the country kept falling in each District Assembly elections and called for proactive measures to increase the current five per cent.