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A professor of Law at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Professor Philip Bondzi-Simpson, has said the current local government system is too weak to ensure any meaningful development in the communities. He has therefore called for a restructuring of the system incorporating chieftaincy to make governance at the community level more effective. At his inaugural lecture at the university on Wednesday, Professor Bondzi-Simpson said it was obvious that the local government system that replaced community governance had failed to deal effectively with governance at the community level. Prof Bondzi-Simpson noted that the ineffectiveness of district assemblies was evident by the filth, squalor and underdevelopment in the communities. He indicated that it was at the community level that the citizens lived their lives, saying issues such as housing, security, sanitation, public health, roads, markets and environmental protection affected citizens there. This, he said, made community level governance very important to the well-being of the nation�s people, adding that it must be strengthened to improve the lives of the citizens. The lecture was on the theme: �Towards Jurisdictional Congruence: A new Paradigm for Community level Governance,� which traced the history of governance in the country to the present and suggested the way forward. The chieftaincy institution Prof Bondzi-Simpson, who is the founding Dean of the UCC Faculty of Law, said: �If we are not jettisoning the chieftaincy institution, we must work with it,� adding that it was time to incorporate chieftaincy to make the institution more relevant. Prof Bondzi-Simpson suggested that chiefs must be assigned responsibilities, saying the benefits would far outweigh the dangers. He said governments and legislation over the years had retained chieftaincy institution but left chiefs without any powers even though they still played effective roles in governance at the community. �Over the years, chieftaincy has been adorned, beautified and decorated but diminished,� he stated, adding that they do a lot of work but are marginalised without any resources. Local Government system weak On the other hand, Prof Bondzi-Simpson said the district assemblies were also left with no powers. He said the assemblies were controlled by the minister of local government, finance and the president himself through appointments, promotions and disciplinary controls, adding that: �If you have multiple masters you have multiple troubles.� He said the marginalisation of chiefs and the controls of the chief executive at the district assemblies had left the local governance with a blurred and confused jurisdiction and an abandoned turf. He noted that nobody thus had the ability and interest to cover responsibilities at the community level. The Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof Domwini Kuupole, said old and ineffective systems must to be queried to ensure newer and more effective ways of governance.