NW PIC impacts community-based volunteers with local dev’t, governance skills.

This was during a three-day training from Wednesday August 7 to Friday 9 in Bamenda.

The training, organised by the Office of the Public Independent Conciliator, PIC, for the North West.

It was chaired by the North West Public Independent Conciliator, Tamfu Simon Fai. 

Also present were representatives from the Socio Economic Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, SEEPD, and Safety Net programmes.

The community-based assistants will work together with agents of the SEEPD programme and those of Safety Net as relay agents of the PIC to promote citizens' participation in local development and governance.

They will also establish surveys on the functioning of regional and council authorities of the region.

During the training, the participants were drilled on several topics including complaint management mechanism, understanding citizens' participation in development and governance, their roles, how to administer questionnaires, working in security challenged environment and others.

Speaking during the training, North West Public Independent Conciliator, Tamfu Simon Fai, revealed that surveys of the last two years indicated that citizens have not been participating adequately in council affairs.

"Following perception surveys organised over the last two years, the PIC observed that citizens do not adequately participate in regional or council affairs or decision-making processes affecting their development and welfare," Tamfu said.

The PIC added that reports from the communities showed that there is little or no consultation of citizens in project identification, limited access to information on council functioning, inadequate involvement of the population in decision making and others.

The training, Tamfu said, will cause the council authorities to sit up, work with the population for the development of their municipalities.

Participants say ready for task

After the three-day training, the community-based assistants together with the SEEPD and Safety Net agents promised to work diligently and prepare factual reports.

According to Barrister Umenjoh Felix from the Andek Council, he is determined and equal to the task, just like his peers.

"This training has equipped me on how to go about administering questionnaires and how to monitor council activities and many others. I am going back to my municipality ready to work and give good results to the PIC," Barrister Umenjoh said.

The training ended with the North West PIC calling on them to work within the values of independence, neutrality, impartiality, fairness, respect for confidentiality and privacy.

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue N0:3197 of Monday August 12, 2024