Selected staff of Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) have been trained on the Gulf of Guinea Social Cohesion (SOCO) project in Tamale.

They included planning officers, engineers, and social welfare officers, among other environment and social safeguards officers selected from the project implementation districts.

The aim of the training was to equip the officers to enable them to train Community Facilitators and members of the Community Project Implementation Committees.

The SOCO project is a $150 million credit facility to the government of Ghana, by the World Bank to aid the improvement of socio-economic and climate resilience.

The project covered 48 districts in the Northern, Savannah, North East, Upper East, Upper West and Oti Regions.

Mr Daniel Botwe, Minister for Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development, speaking during the opening of the training, said the SOCO project was quite different from usual projects undertaken by MMDAs, hence need to train the staff members well, to deliver as expected.

He urged participants to attach diligence to all activities, and leverage on the exposure under SOCO to ensure better delivery of projects under the project.

Mr Samuel Forson, Tamale Zonal Coordinator for the SOCO project, said CF and members of the CPICs were key players under the project, who would facilitate the selection and prioritisation of projects in each cluster.

He said 50 per cent unskilled labour would be employed under the SOCO project implementation, hence we need to equip the MMDA staff to better train CF and CPICs members.

Mr Imoro Fataw, Social Welfare Officer at the Sagnarigu Municipal Assembly, said the SOCO project would involve a lot of infrastructural work that could lead to displacement, making the role of social welfare critical.

He said the training would empower staff to help the vulnerable, if any, during the implementation of the project.

Source: Ghana News Agency