Lawra Assembly hires revenue collection company
As part of efforts to improve on its internal revenue collection drive, the Lawra District Assembly in the Upper West Region has contracted a private firm, Atomz Solution Limited, to collect revenue on its behalf.
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The company has been offered a one-year contract to be renewed based on performance on expiration of the contract.
The contract, which began last month, was signed into effect last Sunday when operatives of Atomz Solution Limited, with assistance from the police, embarked on revenue collection in some market centres in the district.
The company is mandated to collect property rates, market tolls, car parking tolls, garbage fees, public toilet fees, business operating permits and licensing fees and building permit fees, among other functions.
Major challenge
The Presiding Member of the Lawra District Assembly, Hon. Stephen Kpen, said revenue collection was a major challenge that had held back the development of the district.
He said it was expected that outsourcing revenue collection would boost the assembly’s internally generated funds substantially to support development projects of the assembly.
He said possible connivance between revenue collectors and the public must have robbed the assembly of huge sums of money over the years.
The Head of Business and acting Managing Director of Atomz Solutions, Mr Benjamin Twum, said the company was utilising an IT software that checked challenges associated with manual revenue collection methods.
According to staff of the assembly the seeming connivance between revenue collectors and taxpayers gave rise to corruption which over the years had translated into low revenue for the assembly.
Self-checking mechanism
According to Mr Twum, the company’s well-tested system provided a self-checking mechanism that enabled relevant assembly staff to monitor the work of revenue collectors from the comfort of their offices.
The system, he said, monitored and ensured that the required revenue collectors did not default in paying daily collections into the appropriate bank accounts. This, he said, eliminated the chances of appropriation and misappropriation.
Mr Abdul Sallam Kadiri, Coordinating Director of the assembly, said the new arrangement was a big relief and expected to yield tangible dividends to correct deficiencies of what had prevailed over the years.
He said in the past the assembly’s revenue targets were based on the success rate of revenue that was collected, and admitted that those targets might have been lower than normal.
“There was the general perception that revenue collectors were conniving with the people to cheat the system. Such corrupt acts affected our revenue levels,” he said.
The Former Upper West Regional Minister, Mr Bede Ziedeng, once scolded the assembly for setting low financial targets.