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The Head of Local Government Service, Engineer Dr. Ato Arthur, has called on stakeholders to muster efforts towards sustaining the running of its Enhanced Scheme of Service Training course.
The newly introduced course prefixed “Enhanced” is the revised edition of the original, Scheme of Service Training (SoST), which was introduced in 2013.
However, after its implementation, the SoST did not stand the test of time. This was due to a multiplicity of factors, including “absence of coherent and comprehensive approach as well as the absence of sustainability measures”.
Having developed the Enhance SoST on the back of the pros and cons of the maiden course, Ing. Dr. Ato Arthur fears that the unavailability of “sustained funding” could be a major set back to the smooth and continuous running of the programme.
To this end, he has called on the Council of Local Government Service (LGS) and that of the Institute of Local Government Studies (ILGS) to find means to fund the programme in order to support the participants since they or their assemblies may not be financially capacitated to sign them onto the training, especially where it is mandatory.
“Given that the participation in the programme is mandatory and forms the basis for progression from one grade to another, staff will be disadvantaged if attendance to the programme is left solely to them or their respective assemblies.
“This can spell doom for the programme if individual staff do not have the needed financing to enroll on the one hand, while on the other hand, lack of leadership of some Regional Coordinating Councils and Assemblies may use financing as a victimisation tool” said the LGS boss.
Meanwhile, he has suggested that parts of their annual budgets and funding fro programmes be kept for purposes of financing the running of the training course.
“I wish to charge all Regional Coordinating Directors and District Coordinating Directors some of whom are here to include annual allocations in the budget to fund their staff to attend the programme.
“Where the staff are invited for training, we expect you to release them and support them to attend accordingly. That is the way forward”, Ing. Dr. Ato Arthur urged.
The Enhanced Scheme of Service Training course was launched on February 2, 2022 at the Accra Campus of ILGS.
The course aims to train and retrain staff of LGS to enhance their skills, knowledge and competencies to condition them for the changing demands of the job.
The programme was developed by the Office of Head of Local Government Service in conjunction with ILGS.
