The Kwahu South District Assembly is creating bylaws and engaged citizens of the Asakraka electoral area to provide input. The administrator and elected representative consulted stakeholders including chiefs, councils, and religious groups. They distributed questionnaires and held community meetings to gather suggestions using local languages and community radio. A large community meeting was held where citizens helped enact their own bylaws to submit to the District Assembly for final approval. The project faced challenges with lack of funds and support, but engaging stakeholders helped ensure success in creating bylaws representing the community.

1. CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT IN
ENACTING BY LAWS
A CASE STUDY OF
ASAKRAKA ELECTORAL AREA
IN THE KWAHU SOUTH
DISTRICT
GHANA

2. Consulting
Stakeholders
The Kwahu South District
Assembly is in the process of
gazetting its by laws as a district.
It is the responsibility of elected
representatives to make input
into the final document before it
is gazetted. A by- law is a rule or
law established by an organization
or community to regulate itself,
as allowed or provided for by
some higher authority. The
higher authority, generally a
legislature or some other
government body, establishes the
degree of control that the by-
laws may exercise. I together
with an elected representative of
the Asakraka electoral area
begun a tedious task of engaging
the populace in enacting their own
by laws for onward submission to
the district.

3. KEY ACTORS
The main actors for this project
had been myself and the elected
representative for the electoral
area. I work as an administrator
in the District Assembly and i
provided the technical advice.
The Chiefs, Area Councils, Unit
Committee Members, Opinion
Leaders and Religious bodies are
some of the key stakeholders for
this laudable project. We are
doing this with a local CBO
#YALILEARNS who showed
interest in the project from the
onset. The target audience has
been community members ranging
from 18 years and above. In total
we distributed twenty five
questionnaires to the various
stakeholders and had twenty two
returned to us. We had some
stakeholders making useful
suggestions that were not
captured in the questionnaire on
separate sheets

4. HOW DOES IT
WORK(TOOLS)
The literacy rate in the electoral
area is very low and most of our
activities were done in the local
language. We also made use of
the community radio and the don
do (a local device used to send
messages across) to educate the
citizenry. These tools have been
very effective and we still use it
to let the citizens know what is
going on. The next stage was to
meet the populace together and
present their findings and agree
on the laws to be submitted to
the Assembly for the final
gazetting. This was done last
Friday and it was a mammoth
gathering of all people in the
community. We themed it the
General Assembly for the people.
We exchanged ideas and the
citizens were involved in enacting
their own by laws.

5. RISKS AND
OPPORTUNITIES
The risk that we anticipated
was not getting the needed
support from the populace
but we were proven wrong.
The approach we used helped
us a lot. We first of all
contacted the various
stakeholders to inform and
educate them about the
project and took their inputs
too. The challenges has been
lack of funds. This project
has been sponsored from our
own pockets with no help
from any outfit. It has
drained us a lot. The other
challenge has been the lack
of support from the District
Assembly.

6. EVALUATION OF
SUCCESS
It is our hope that the
final recommendations will
be accepted by the
General Assembly for
gazetting. That will be the
first indicator of our
success. The chiefs and
people of the community
have also agreed to be
governed by the bye laws
even though the Assembly
is yet to gazette it to
make it a legal document.
THANK YOU