Any Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assembly (MMDA), which defaults in submitting its plans to the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) should be disqualified from assessing the District Development Facility (DDF), says Western Regional Minister.

Mr Paul Evans Aidoo made the suggestion on Thursday at a day’s workshop on dissemination of feedback on District Medium Term Development Plans and Monitoring and Evaluation Plans organised by the NDPC in Sekondi.

District Planning Officers, Economic Planning Officers, Budget Officer and District Coordinating Directors in the region attended the workshop.

Mr Aidoo also proposed that the DDF should make early submission of the plans, one of its major qualifications.

He said the district Medium Term Development Plans and Monitoring and Evaluation Plans are the major tools for development purposes, and appealed to the participants to accept in good faith whatever shortcomings the NDPC would reveal about their plans.

Mr Aidoo said, the workshop was a way of enhancing purposeful training for MMDAs and suggested to the NDPC to liaise with training institutions like the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration and the Institute of Local Government Studies to utilise the two per cent of the District Assemblies Common Fund allocated to MMDAs for the training of officials.

"There should be fairness and equity in the training programmes for these officials and not skewed to favour some class of officers as it is the case now in the MMDAs," he said. **