Context

The Parliamentary Select Committee on Government Assurances as part its mandate to assure public policy implementation, engaged two communities in the Western and Central Regions of Ghana, from 7-12^th January, 2007, building on an earlier visi to the three Northen Regions. The programme was co-facilitated by the Institute for Policy Alternatives, to eable the GAC to assess the policies of Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (fCUBE) and National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). These policies are key poverty reduction policies.

The outreach initiative is aimed at improving accountability, transparency and participation in national poverty reduction efforts, through building the capacity of the Parliamentary Committees to carry out their oversight, representational, and legislative roles.[1] The immediate objectives were to:

(i)                 assess the fCUBE and NHIS policies as assured to Parliament in public policy statement(s);

(ii)               improve citizens participation in poverty reduction process and parliamentary governance;

(iii)             improve Parliament-Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) partnership to ensure adequate articulation of pro-poor concerns in Parliament.

Hence, expected outcome level results of this community outreach included:

• increasing capacity of the committees to monitor and evaluate poverty reduction efforts and thereby promote accountability; 
• encouraging participation by Parliament, civil society and the citizenry in poverty reduction efforts;
• promoting Parliament-community and CSO engagement in parliamentary governance. 

Programme summary 

A preliminary one day residential workshop defined the key issues for interrogations by the seven-member subcommittee of the GAC. The concept of Government Assurance was also clarified, and best practices/strategies on assurances discussed. This discussions yielded cross-partisan consensus on what/how to interrogate the implementation of the two policies in furtherance of the Committee mandate. 

The following question guided: 

• How – fCUBE and the NHIS are implemented by the Ghana Education Service and the NHIS Secretariat at the Regional and District levels?
• How are the service providers at the District and community levels engaged with the implementation of the policies of the fCUBE and the NHIS?
• What advantages and challenges confront these two policies, from the view of citizens?
• How can the policies be improved? What will be the role of Parliament in improving the implementation of these two policies?
• How can the policies be made more pro-poor?

Findings

The Assessment of the fCUBE policy revealed that poor management of schools, unsatisfactory level of motivation for teachers and poor parental responsibility towards their wards were major issues hampering the effectiveness of the policy.

The assessment also showed that the NHIS policy suffers from public misconceptions about drug list of the scheme, poor discretionary decisions about those exempt from the premium charges, non-professional attitudes by some hospital staff and apparent conflicting interpretation of the people with disability law and the NHIS law.

Follow-up Action