development); and others were for capacity building (providing equipment and training to
help make districts deliver on their mandate).
In addition there is the Urban Grant Project, a World Bank facility. Forty-six (46)
MMDAs are assessed and those who qualified were to be given USD26 million together.
2.5.4
Administrative decentralization
The Local Government (Departments of District Assemblies) Commencement
Instrument, 2009, L.I. 1961 was passed December 2009 and became operative in
February 2010. This instrument aims at creating Departments of the Assembly,
transferring personnel and functions from centralized MDAs to the Local Government
Service and transfer funds by way of the composite budget to departments of the
Assembly.
Following this a ceremony was organized to symbolically transfer 32,358 staff members
from the Civil Service to the Local Government Service on March 2011. A Human
Resource and Physical Infrastructure Auditing had been conducted to ascertain the actual
status of the MMDAs to inform policy formulation and planning. Analysis of the data
from the HR Audit established gaps in the human resource and infrastructural bases. In
addition, the need for critical staff to man proposed new districts (now created) was
established. For these, the Service applied for financial clearance to employ 2,626
officers for the various classes of workers in he old and newly created districts.
The LGS Secretariat has been made more functional by the provision of more office
space, equipment and personnel. Human Resource Departments have been established in
all the ten (10) Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs) and a further 20 Human
Resource Units in some selected MMDAs have been created. The departments and units
are aimed at equipping the RCCs and MMDAs to efficiently manage the human resource
to be integrated into the Assemblies.
In anticipation of the staff to be transferred to the Service, Human Resource Protocols
Documents (Conditions of Service/Scheme of Service, Guidelines for Appointments and
Sixth Annual APRM Progress Report: January – December 2011
13